


Till Your Dreams Hold Mine

by ivanolix



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canonical Character Death, Cylon Alliance, Cylons, Developing Relationship, Loss, Multi, Redemption, Resurrection, Romance, Wordcount: 10.000-30.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-16
Updated: 2010-07-15
Packaged: 2017-10-20 18:46:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/215957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivanolix/pseuds/ivanolix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kara and Lee lose Zak for good again, and Zak himself is lost, and the world will never be the same again. But how the world changes for Kara and Lee is going to affect the Cylons themselves. Mainly goes AU from "Resistance"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to greycoupon and frolicndetour for their beta work! Warning, this AU changes the very nature of the Cylons, eliminating the Final Five as we know it (in favor of the originally-promised "evolution" from the centurions as explanation for their existence). Boomer exists, but the Eights as a line do not. These, and other changes, will be explained in the fic, but it's not exposition heavy so I thought I'd make that clear up front.

His Viper crumbled around him and a blooming burst of pain made him scream voicelessly. He always thought your life was supposed to pass before your eyes _before_ death, not afterwards. But there it was, images and words and emotions deluging his mind that must now be dead. His mouth was still open in a scream when the pain of life made him breath in sharply. Limbs spasmed, pulsed—his lungs should have felt burnt.

When his eyes shot open, he saw black above him and red lights. Slippery liquid flowed around his naked body, some kind of tub holding him like a babe in a cradle. He thought he was dead, but this wasn’t the afterlife he’d read about in the scriptures. Shivering at the unearthly feeling of being alive again, he gasped.

“Be calm, Zak,” a soft male voice sounded above his head.

He twisted, feeling the liquid splash around him, and though his limbs trembled uncontrollably he choked in a breath. “Who is it?” he demanded, not even knowing why it mattered when none of this made sense.

A face with deeply carved features appeared by him, piercing grey eyes looking at him with a smile just as soft as the one on his mouth. “Peace, brother. You are confused.”

“Damn right I am,” Zak managed. Kara. The last thing he remembered was Kara. Where was he? What was this?

“You’ve fulfilled your mission and have come home,” the man said slowly. “Not the mission you were first given, but the one that we know was necessary.”

“Who are you?” Zak choked out, still staring at him in his shock.

“Number Two,” the man said with a small smirk. “But also Leoben, just as you are Number Seven and Zak Adama both. Don’t worry, your memories will come back slowly.”

He was breathing too fast now, lost, hyperventilation, too much, where was he, where was Kara, had he died?

“Too fast,” Leoben said, placing a hand over Zak’s brow and eyes.

Zak felt surprised to find that it seemed almost familiar.

“Breathe,” Leoben told him. “You will ask questions later.”

Zak tried, and almost managed. The first word that came back to him was Cylon, and it wasn’t from old history lessons this time. He was a Cylon. He had no idea what it meant.

***

Kara stood at the funeral with Commander Adama at her side. She saluted, and the gunshots cracked loudly, hurting her ears in a way she didn’t protest. It was only a lie that kept Adama at her side, and it was no comfort. But she looked across the way at Zak’s mourning mother, at his brother, and his blue eyes met hers.

There were lies between them that mattered much more.

Her eyes stung blearily even now, and she swallowed back but stood still. Somehow she knew that Lee wouldn’t approach her later. The weaker side of her was glad of it, glad that unspoken words remained unspoken.

Lee didn’t approach her after the funeral, or for the weeks after that, so all she could remember was Zak. What she’d done. She couldn’t go back to teaching.

When Commander Adama eventually called to see if she wanted the open position on his battlestar, she accepted it. She’d never thought that the life would suit her, but it was more than half a penance to serve on his ship, to live every day with that guilt. The memories of Lee along with Zak were a bitter shock, and she finally bent over the picture in her locker to keep them from coming so often.

***

The Cylons looked like humans now. They did more than look like it. Zak didn’t know what to say when Leoben told him who he was, the fourth generation of their kind that were not copies of each other but copies of people who had once been human and alive. Leoben and the rest of the first six weren’t like that.

“When?” Zak asked hoarsely, sitting hands over knees and back curved protectively.

“Before you entered flight school,” Leoben told him. “The extra memories we provided made you choose that path.”

“Why?” Zak still didn’t remember much. Not that he was trying.

“The plan was to infiltrate the military, but then—then we discovered Kara Thrace.”

Zak clenched his fist and didn’t look up at Leoben. “We.”

“You and I. The Hybrid’s words were only revealed to us. Your death was too early for the others, but it will help her on her journey, I have seen it.”

He shook his head, trying to forget her. “So now my mission is?”

“Nothing, unless you want one,” Leoben said. “But brother, it may be best to observe, not take on another identity.”

Zak thought that maybe he could infiltrate like the other six of them, the ones that were known to each other, taking missions while knowing exactly who they were. The Final Six—Five, now—the ones still in cover so deep that not even their brethren knew...he didn’t want to join that again.

“I want to go back in,” he said. He’d always wanted to be involved with pyramid as a child. Maybe he could again. He knew that Kara was on Galactica now, so he would be safe on the planet. But it was safety from memories that held his mind, more than protecting some nebulous Plan.

***

Lee didn’t know why he had felt regret on hearing that Kara was serving on his father’s ship. It wasn’t like he planned to speak to her and face all that—so he’d thought. He was supposed to live a life now free of the both of them. But sometimes, restless in hot sheets during summer nights, he remembered burning grey-green eyes framed by straw-colored bangs.

He remembered her more than Zak, almost. He thought he shouldn’t have.

***

Memories had almost all returned to Zak when he left the secret Cylon fleet. Enough that he knew that it was God’s will that their Plan come to fruition. It was still a year off, and so when he joined the Caprica Buccaneers as a bag-boy behind the scenes, he knew there’d be time to adjust.

He didn’t see any of his Cylon brethren. Whatever was going on up in battlestars, he didn’t know that either. It made his cover easy, except on game nights. He watched his team play from the TV screen in the locker room, and wondered if Kara was watching from somewhere out there in space. And then his heart would twist as he considered his father, who would be watching and rooting for the Panthers. And Lee, who didn’t really care at all about sports, but would probably read about the game in the paper tomorrow.

It was thoughts like those that made him glad for other distractions. Like the way that Sam Anders reminded him of Leoben, sometimes. Not in looks or behavior, but in the way he felt familiar. Zak had to be going crazy, really. The Plan couldn’t come soon enough.

***

Of all the places to be, Lee had ended up on the Galactica when the world ended. And yet, if he’d been a religious man, he might have thanked the gods. Kara. He was with Kara once more, and his father.

She smiled at him again now, and they pretended that there wasn’t any baggage. The past wasn’t important now, not when each extra second was testament to a miracle. So they were friends, and he tried to drown in the joy of it, and it seemed to work.

Sometimes he caught a look in her eye and wondered just how long they could play at this. Maybe it wouldn’t matter—they all might die soon enough—so he pushed it aside and kept up the game of “just friends” with her.

So far it was worth it.

***

Zak hadn’t planned on surviving the holocaust. After that, the Plan didn’t look so right. He didn’t have anyone to mourn, but he panicked with the rest of them. The team ran for their lives across nuclear-wasted fields and forests and cities, Zak in the middle of them. They weren’t an army. He realized that he didn’t want to die again just as much as he didn’t really want them to die.

He'd forgotten his past life as a cadet on purpose, but when they all learned how to use guns, how to shoot Centurions, and Zak forgot to remember that they were his people that he was killing...that, he hadn't meant to do.

***

As Kara got into her Cylon Raider, Roslin’s mission floating around her head while she prepared for hyperspace, she had a moment where she did regret sleeping with Baltar. But not for anything Lee had told her, bitter and hurt and saying words that no one had the right to say. She just wished, achingly, that she’d known how complicated it would get.

Was it too much to ask for simplicity after the end of everything?

Foreign controls at her fingertips, she jumped the Raider towards Caprica on an illegal mission, and it was the same old strategy: distance. If she waited long enough, things would go back to the beginning and they could forget the past. It had taken two years with her and Lee before—maybe this time it would only be a few days.

The Arrow was a good excuse.

***

Sharon Valerii hadn’t been surprised when Cally came rushing at her with a gun, and she almost welcomed the feeling of blood dripping to the floor, lying in Chief’s arms. She wanted peace from the chaos. She woke in a tub of goo with her memories returned, all her sins. Even Sharon Valerii, Raptor pilot, had to scream at the death in that.

“The Final Five are returning home now,” the Six by her tub said warmly.

“Hush, sister!” retorted Leoben. As Sharon lay shivering, empty-hearted, he looked to her. “You’ll be all right.”

It was so strangely human, she didn’t know what to do, so she just stared.

A Six helped her into clothes, nondescript clothes that fit her—she tried not to think of the thousands of identical bodies looking just like her. When she refused to speak, the Six left her alone, curled in on herself in an iron pose.

“Eight,” Leoben said after she had sat a while, and she looked up to see him.

Sharon felt her eyes burning coldly towards him, and she didn’t want any of this. But he took two steps forward with military tanks hanging from his hands, and it didn’t seem like the Leoben she’d seen in the footage on the Fleet. “What is this?”

“A friend once told me that the process of the Final Six is difficult, given all the memories.” Leoben shrugged. “And I need to speak to you.”

Sharon swallowed, and her lips and throat felt dry. She reached for the clothes and held them next to her chest, brushing the familiar texture and seams of the garments. “Who?” she asked flatly.

“Number Seven,” Leoben said, sitting next to her with a strange smile. “But you knew of him as Zak Adama, I believe.”

“The Commander’s son?”

He nodded. “The first Six of us have many copies, but you, the Final Six, were unique. You were given the minds and shapes of real people, to live lives as humans.” He shouldn’t have smiled the way he did.

Sharon shivered, and tried to crush the memories of her human self far and away. She could almost feel, on the edge of memory, that sin of stealing a life that was greater than just destroying one.

“But it hasn’t gone according to plan,” Leoben said after a pause, staring at her closely. “Some of our brethren are concerned with Number Seven especially, but I know...I have seen the prophecies. You, you and the four yet to wake, there is some destiny that ties you to all of us. And you are tied to the humans, to specific ones at least. It meant something that you believed you were human, Eight.”

Sharon flinched. “Sharon.”

His eyes narrowed, but his mouth remained soft. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Yes, that is what I mean exactly.”

She had no idea what he meant, but felt that she would learn much more over the next days. At least it was better than the Six and her ‘We love you; welcome to the family’ comments of obliviousness. She still clutched her old uniform to her, but took a deep breath, pulling her shoulders back. “Okay, what the frak are you talking about?”

***

Zak sat on the edge of camp and stared at the gun in his hands. It was different from Viper controls; the trigger, when pulled, could do ripping damage in the blink of an eye. He’d watched Centurions, Sixes, Dorals, go down in burning metal and flesh at his hands. They’d dripped out human-looking blood, and his hands had shaken.

“Hey.” Sam Anders came over, sitting next to him, weary lines on his face as always.

“Mission today,” Zak said, moving his gun closer to his chest, cradling the safety. He’d long since drowned out the Cylon part of him that said that the plan needed Sam Anders dead. But it didn’t make him calm.

“I wasn’t kidding when I said you were on the team.” Anders gave him a close look. “From someone who didn’t even have enough competitive spirit to try for the C-bucs instead of support staff way back then, you’re picking up all this war training faster than some of us.”

Zak held back, as always, the revelation that he was always trained for war. Just, war against humans like Anders. “It’s not something I’m going to do unless I have to,” he said and turned to face his leader. “I’ll defend myself, but I don’t want to go out like—”

“Like Coach,” murmured Anders, head dropping heavily for a second.

“Yeah, that.” Zak shouldn’t have felt sick when he saw the Centurions rip the C-bucs’ heart to shreds with bullets, since that was just another level of the nuclear destruction that he’d allied with. But he’d known exactly why Anders had disappeared that night, and why he’d come back with a weight behind his eyes darkening the blue. He’d pushed them all to work harder, pushed Zak to learn how better to survive.

He couldn’t know that Zak wasn’t sure if he wanted to survive. Afraid of growing too close to these people, yet again, afraid of leaving them to die. Afraid of losing his identity in hatred of the Cylons, afraid that his identity really was hatred of the Cylons after all. He was pathetic. Ever since his Viper had exploded with him, he’d had nothing.

Nothing but this resistance, and the people who like Kara he shouldn’t be falling for. That should make the decision easy.

“I’ll go next time,” he told Anders, nodding more for himself than for the other man.

Anders nodded slowly, half a smile in his eyes. “You don’t have to,” he said with a shrug.

“I need to do it someday.” Zak’s lips pressed together in a firm line. He needed to live like a human before he died.

***

While literally kicking his heels in the brig, Lee felt like he had a hangover. A moral one, if not a literal one. Sometimes he did truly idiotic things, like first lashing out at the person he cared about most, and then alienating the only other person on the ship he had bothered to care about—by breaking the law, no less, as if his life could be anymore severely frakked.

Roslin was on his side, sort of. Dualla too. It wasn’t that he wasn’t grateful, especially when he saw the trust in their eyes, but he hated to think that he might die with them as his only allies. He had to get out of here, professionally and personally.

And he missed Kara so hard it hurt, which made it worse, because surely he’d survived two whole years without her. It had been different when her life wasn’t hanging on the scales, and when his last words hadn’t been uncalled-for vitriol.

Yes, sometimes Lee was an idiot. He’d make himself another chance, though, if he could. Perhaps getting Roslin out of the brig would get him going on that.

***

On the way back to the Caprican Resistance’s camp, Helo leaned over and whispered dryly to Kara that she always made things exciting. For weeks he’d been on the run almost uneventfully—until he followed the smoke from her crashed Raider to find the museum, and since then they’d been shot at, mistaken for Cylons, and found the most fantastic luck. Kara rolled her eyes and mentioned that it had taken a good long time to get there. She could have gone back immediately in the Raider, but there was no leaving her people behind in Kara's mind.

Helo seemed to be handling things differently than her in general, like the way he could tell her so easily that he’d found out that Boomer was a Cylon. Kara didn’t know what to think when he listed off the human models he’d seen, bringing up Boomer at the end. Maybe he’d had enough time to push it all aside, focus on something to live for. For her, the fear and anger hurt too much to be processed, so she was glad for this excitement now.

Arrow in hand, she was itching for a Heavy Raider to get them off this hellhole. She had only a smidgen of faith in this cocky resistance group, despite knowing who they were and how much it proved that they’d made it this long. What really mattered was that they had resources, resources that she could use.

The truck stopped outside an actual building, bustling with more people than she’d seen in a while. “So, what is this place?” she asked, hopping down.

“Delphi Union High School,” Anders said, watching as his people started to come unload the trucks. “Toasters don’t patrol this area, so...”

Kara followed his gaze, frowning. “How many people?”

“Fifty-three.” Anders grimaced. “Almost twice that before we were hit last week. Come on, let’s go,” he waved his hand to the people.

“Pyramid teams?” Kara asked, ever more skeptic, though the death count seemed likely.

“Nah,” Anders said, turning back towards her. “Just us C-bucs, and a bunch of hikers, survivalists, people like that that we picked up on the way.”

Helo asked him about the radiation meds they had, but Kara was thinking about numbers, watching the faces as they came by to carry the weapons that the raiding party had obtained before running into her and Helo. Fifty-three wasn’t much for an assault team against a foe that could potentially field thousands.

But something caught her eye, just in the periphery. Not knowing why, she whipped her head around to see a young man hefting an ammo container onto his shoulder. He looked up right as she realized what looked familiar—and the world descended.

If she had even a moment of doubt, it was gone with that flash of startled recognition in his eyes. “Zak?” she choked out, frozen.

He didn’t move, and she hissed in a sharp almost painful breath, yanking out her gun to hold aimed at his head.

“Whoa, whoa there,” Anders said, as he and Helo approached. “That’s Zak Eveson, he—”

“He’s a Cylon,” Kara gritted out, feeling her brow draw tight but not pulling the trigger. Zak Adama stood there, container dropped, shock over his face, looking too _normal_. He shouldn’t be real: he shouldn’t be alive. She remembered Boomer and words blurted out, “How many other Cylons have me targeted?”

“Wait, Kara, it’s not like that,” he tried to protest, hands up.

Kara couldn’t stand to hear his voice like that, couldn’t stand any of it, but she still couldn’t pull the trigger.

“He’s a Cylon?” Anders asked, behind her shoulder, his voice breaking in his own shock.

They were all staring at Zak now.

“Kara, please, I didn’t know when I was with you,” he protested, looking her straight in the eye. “It wasn’t a trick.”

It somehow hurt more that he wasn’t even denying it, and Kara choked back something as her finger twitched. He just stood there.

Then, as the world seemed frozen, a shot rang out. Zak’s face tensed, and he crumpled forward, blood on the back of his head where a bullet had found his skull. Jean Barolay stood, face tight, gun smoking.

“Gods, he was a Cylon?” Anders breathed out.

Kara stared at the body lying before her, and it hit her that it was Zak Adama. Frak everything, it was her Zak, and he was a Cylon, and he had died and come back only to spread more lies. All the past two years that she remembered started to crumble under the weight of this.

“Kara, that was Zak?” Helo asked, quietly standing at her shoulder.

“Who else was he?” Anders asked, turning to her, disillusionment broad across his face.

Kara shook her head, putting up a hand and swallowing down the emotions already threatening to break her. The angry bustle around her made her finger twitch again, and without another word she turned and walked away from them all.

She didn’t know whether she wanted to hit something or burst into tears.

***

It didn’t hurt any less that time when Zak woke in the goo and flailed with his hands as he tried to grab a breath. He never wanted more than in that moment to be as human as he’d trained himself to believe.

Leoben was there again, but no Six, and in her place was a woman he didn’t recognize.

“What happened?” Leoben asked concerned.

“Kara was down there,” Zak gasped, trying to forget the feel of the bullet digging into the back of his head. “She recognized me.” He shook his head.

“This is Sharon,” Leoben said after a nod. “She came home to us while you were gone. And you’re back early, brother, but as soon as you’re ready, we need you.”

Zak didn’t really hear him, remembering the last thing he’d seen, that look of sudden grief on Kara’s face. He’d forgotten just how much he cared that she cared. He’d need to forget again, now that she knew. There was nothing there for him.

“Why do you want to talk to me?” he asked the two, accepting Leoben’s offer of a hand out of the tub.

***

Kara’s breaths came out harshly as she slammed the pyramid ball into the hoop, muscles aching with all the anger she put into them.

She wasn’t surprised to see that it was Anders approaching her. Helo knew better. “I can’t believe you have a regulation court,” she growled, not looking at him as she picked up the ball, knuckles almost white as she gripped it.

“This planet does things to you,” he said, darkness coloring his tone. He stood, on edge. “These Cylons do things to you.”

So it wasn’t for play, it was for exactly what she was doing. Kara grabbed another imaginary point for herself, and felt as much as heard the clank of the ball hitting the grate square on.

“I know I shouldn’t be here,” Anders said, stepping in to grab the ball as it rolled down. “But I can’t help but be grateful for what you did.”

The weight of her thoughts seemed doubled as Kara stood there, hand clenching. “Yeah, well, maybe I should be grateful to myself too, after grieving over his worthless ass for two years.”

She recognized the look of sympathetic anger burning in the back of Anders’ eyes. “Yeah, I wasted too much training and protection on that...” He didn’t finish.

“Makes me want to go kill a thousand of them before I get back to my Fleet.”

Anders looked at her closely. “We could use any help, you know. Trained help.”

But Kara hadn’t burned off the first frustration yet. She walked up to him, pulled the ball from his hands. “After a game, then we make battle plans.”

He stared at her like she was insane. “You’re challenging me?”

She walked over to where the pads lay. “I need to kick someone’s ass. Just because you’re pro, doesn’t mean you’re good.”

The light of competition in his eyes when she turned back was all she needed, and she threw herself into the game as if she was up against a dozen Raiders without backup.

He was better than her cynical mind would have guessed, even on a good day, and the focus the game demanded made the anger seem manageable. All the guilt and emotion she’d denied came out in every toss and shove, every trip and tackle as they pretended the score was the objective.

Then Anders tripped and slammed her into the backboard, and her memory flashed, and her stomach rolled as she remembered a picnic at the park with Zak. Zak and Lee. The full realization of what today meant threatened to hit, and she had to stop, putting up her hand as she sucked in a sharp breath.

“You okay?” Anders asked.

“No more pyramid,” she said, shaking her head, biting down the thoughts. Not yet. She couldn’t take it. “I need that strategy now.”

They walked off the court, the ball lying abandoned, and Anders took her to the main bunker. He cleared a table, pulled up some papers and pencils, then looked at her. “We have maps, numbers, lists of resources—knock yourself out.”

Kara looked at it all, and already she could feel a little relief. She breathed out. “Booze?” she asked, looking up at him.

He gave her a tight smile. “Yeah, that would help.”

It wasn’t exactly drowning out her sorrows, it was better than that. Everything was about death for Cylons, and finally she had someone who understood that desire to simply kill. They didn’t talk about what it felt like to lose someone they thought they knew to the enemy, to feel duped and humiliated. They didn’t have to. Kara and Anders poured all the self-hatred into designing ops, and even when Helo came in later and reminded Kara of her mission, the rest of the day was spent in planning.

She didn’t break until after supper that night, as she took silently to the bed she’d been given, and her careful walls of denial shattered. Sharp tears at her own idiocy soaked her pillow, silent before she fell asleep, and she couldn’t be sure that there was ever a Cylon death count that could make up for what she’d been duped into.

***

Zak didn’t know what feeling was resting at the base of his heart after Leoben told him the current situation, and after Sharon told him that his father and brother were still alive. It took him a moment to realize he’d have to hide just how much he wasn’t exactly on the Cylon side now, but only a moment was necessary.

“We needed to talk to you alone,” Sharon said.

“One is playing with the humans,” Leoben said, “torturing them before he finishes the job. It’s not right.”

Zak nodded, trying not to let images of his team, some of them now dead and unburied, flash before his eyes. “No, it’s not.”

“And the Hybrid has given new words.”

This time Zak looked up from where he’d been staring at his own hands. “What did she say?” he asked, Kara coming unasked to his mind.

Sharon looked doubting, but Leoben’s eyes were firm as he met Zak’s. “There is something in the Fleet, something we should not destroy. A god, and Kara Thrace.”

“That’s what the Hybrid said?” Zak asked. His mind made the connection immediately. “Kara always called herself god.”

“No, no.” Leoben shook his head, leaned over his knees. “There are two separate beings that she named.”

Zak glanced from Leoben to Sharon, and then jerked back. “Apollo?” he said before he had time to think.

Sharon’s breath caught in her throat.

Zak swallowed, and the baseship felt confining with all the confusion around him. Ever since he’d woken up the first time, nothing had ever felt secure or stationary as if it wasn’t about to just turn on a dime.

“What does the prophecy mean?” asked Sharon, wrapping her head around Lee being part of a prediction before Zak could.

Leoben’s mouth twitched. “I don’t know, not yet. But it’s something we need, if we are to survive.”

“Survive,” Zak repeated, hands clenching in fists for reasons he couldn’t explain.

“Or maybe not survive,” Leoben amended quietly. “Maybe she meant something we need to _live_.”

Looking back up at them, Zak took a deep breath. The Cylons needed Kara and Lee for something. “Then we can’t destroy the Fleet before we know.”

He knew right after he said it that they had already come to the same conclusion.

“We just need to convince the others,” Sharon said.

The three of them sat together, and the weight of the task felt greater when they didn’t have words to mitigate it.

***

Lee froze in a meat locker as political plans went into place, and for all that he hated himself for some of the choices he made, there was one thing that burned in him. Not love, just a stronger hate than the one he felt towards himself.

He remembered Boomer’s cold eyes before she shot his father. He remembered Doral’s from the security tapes, that smirk before the bomb went off. He remembered Leoben, and the way Kara had flown harder than even her usual for weeks afterwards. He remembered Shelley and her innocent appearance.

There was nothing Lee could hate more than the way they slipped into human society, throwing doubts every which way and carefully plotting destruction. If there was one thing he knew, it was his enemy. This wasn’t about Roslin, or Earth, not really. It was about defeating those Cylon bastards for good.


	2. Chapter 2

“What the frak was that?” Anders demanded, slamming around the corner, gun held close to chest as a dozen bullets barreled past where he’d just been standing.

“Thought you could handle yourself,” Kara said, listening for the clank of the Centurion. They were halfway across the hangar, but the toasters kept on coming.

“Thought you were my wingman,” Anders retorted, but more banter than bitter.

Kara snorted. “That’s Barolay—now wait.” She held up her hand, but the clank had stopped. “Crap,” she muttered.

Then before she knew, Anders was shoving her out of the way. She fell crashing to the concrete, catching her head from cracking but with the wind knocked out of her. The Centurion that had almost shot her swung at Anders, but Kara’s hand was still on her gun and she fired straight into its head. Anders finished it off with a sizzling pop right between its eye, then reached down a hand to yank Kara to her feet.

“Sorry about that,” he said while leaning his head around the corner.

Kara rolled her eyes. “Don’t talk so much and don’t apologize for getting my back.”

She caught the tight grin on his face as they advanced out, guns blazing, and across the Cylon hangar she saw Helo yelling as he laid into one of the silver toasters. Sue-Shaun finished it off for him, and suddenly it all quieted down.

“Move, move!” Anders shouted an order as the others hesitated.

Kara ran up to the Heavy Raider, mind spinning as she remembered the Raider before she’d crashed it. The ramp was lowered, and she hopped up towards the controls. “Anders, you probably want to make a retreat before they get here!”

“Not enough room in that?” he asked, leaning into the ship.

“On the off chance I can’t fly it, I’m not taking your crew down with me,” Kara said. This was it, at last, after a week of these ops that had been both frustrating and invigorating. She’d never been that interested in infantry work, but it felt like she’d gained back five years of her life with this.

She exhaled sharply as she recognized the first basic control, taking a seat and feeling intuition grab onto her like a talon. The engine came to life beneath her fingers, and with a growl of success she pulled the alien ship off the floor.

“Centurions on the way!” Anders called as he hopped up into the ship.

“What the frak are you doing?” she demanded, staring back.

“I’ve got your back, remember,” he said, with an absent-minded toss of his shoulders.

She didn’t have time to acknowledge him, but somehow her hands found what looked like the firing system, and with a spin she’d turned the ship around and knocked a few bullets into the toasters. Silver parts went crashing and flying, and a surge of appreciation for good weaponry pulsed through her.

Glancing back again, she saw that Anders held onto the side of the ship, Jean right behind him.

“Hey!” Kara called with a sharp narrowing of her glance.

“Look, his back is mine,” Jean retorted, nodding towards Anders. The man rolled his eyes just slightly, as if not caring if either of them noticed.

“Oh for frak’s sake,” Kara muttered. They were in this together regardless. The Cylons were finished off, however, and with barely a wobble in her flight she set the ship down a mile off, making the landing before the rest of the team came running up.

“Damn you’re a genius,” Helo said, swinging his arm broadly as he ran up the ramp of the ship.

Kara laughed above the noise of the ship, but said nothing until they were back at the High School. The sun, washed out by the radiation clouds, dipped behind the tree-line. It had been a long day.

After a quick meal, Kara walked out to the ship they’d acquired, running her hand along its side.

It wasn’t like her Raider, but not because of its shape—the Cylons were more personal now, and her brow furrowed. It wasn’t a pet, this one, it was an enemy she’d grudgingly use.

“Leaving tonight?”

“I could,” Kara answered Anders’ comment as he came up behind her. “Planned on tomorrow morning.” She glanced back. He had his eyes on the ship, almost fascinated. It’d been a surprise to find over this week that he reminded her of Helo—although in hindsight, his reputation might have given her a hint. They worked well together.

He turned and nodded to her after a long pause. “So, any chance of you coming back once your mission is done? Not that we don’t mind fighting the home-front battle, but...”

Her face tightened. It’d been a question that had grudgingly pushed Zak out of her mind the past two nights, but she wasn’t sure she prefered the conflict of logic and duty. “It’ll be hard enough for me to get off this planet when I can jump. I don’t know if getting back would be an option.”

He sighed, but nodded unsurprised.

Kara frowned. “I’m not just abandoning you, though. I’ll leave secure space coordinates, and in six months I’ll be there with a rescue party—all you have to do is what we did today.” He glanced up, and she twisted her mouth in a wry smile. “And not die.”

“We’ll all do our best,” he answered.

“Helo said he wants to stay.” Kara glanced down, tried not to think about how likely it was that both of them were signing their death sentences, and wishing they weren’t so godsdamned devoted to ‘duty’. “So he’ll be your intelligence.” She chuckled. “Well, of a kind.”

Anders managed a grin at that. Then, “Before you go, you mentioned that Zak had family. Do we need to know a description?”

Kara shook her head, hoping he didn’t see her fist clench. “There’s no way they’re Cylons, it wouldn’t make sense.” It couldn’t...she’d spent too much time this week on the subject.

“Sounds like a plan.” Anders offered his hand, and Kara grabbed him by the elbow and shared an arm hug. “It’s been nice, Kara Thrace.”

“Likewise,” Kara said, gripping his shoulder a moment before letting go. Anders and Helo had kept her going this past week, more than she would have thought. And more than she thought she would have needed.

Anders walked off into the night, and Kara let her hand rest on the Heavy Raider again. The Arrow, that was what her concern was. Not people left behind in the Fleet, not people left behind here, not people she almost shot here.

***

 _“Civilian vessels, civilian vessels. This is Starbuck. Do you read? Is anybody getting this? Hello?”_

Lee’s heart skipped a beat at the sound over the radio, and a collective sigh of relief went around the room.

“Let her know she can dock the Cylon ship,” Roslin informed Meier, who sat at the radio. The little quiver at the corner of her mouth reminded Lee that despite it being Kara, the chance of success hadn’t been high.

The few moments he stood, waiting, felt like more absence than the weeks she’d been gone. His plans hadn’t felt so sure without her to be at his side. Gods, he didn’t know how to express how glad he was that she was safe.

He didn’t have a plan when he heard her steps coming up the hallway, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to run to meet her as if he was desperate, but the moment her head turned around the corner and it was Kara, just how he remembered—he almost lost himself in a smile and a run and an embrace.

Kara’s eyes met his first, and he stopped. Lee didn’t notice the arrow-case on her back, not with her eyes like that. He didn’t need to interpret what it meant because of what it reminded him of, and their last conversation hit him over the head like a brick. He didn’t have a word to say when she looked past him to Roslin, masking the conflict in her eyes, opening her mouth to speak.

“I have the Arrow, Madame President,” she said, after a swallow and a few paces forward, swinging down the case.

 _A pilot who can’t keep her pants on_. Lee cursed himself for not having an apology planned after all this time, for not even remembering his hasty words. He didn’t mean it. Gods, he didn’t mean it.

“Thank you, Captain,” Roslin said with a soft smile, accepting the arrow with reverent hands.

Kara breathed out. “So, down to the planet then?”

“Patience,” Roslin said, with an amused eyebrow raise. “We need to plot our path first.”

Lee watched Kara nod, and wanted her to turn and look at him. They needed to get away so he could—but before he gathered his thoughts, she had walked off past Roslin and out the door. Just left.

“Let’s get to work, then,” Roslin said to the people around her.

Lee had drawn up his anchor, but the wind wasn’t blowing anymore.

***

Kara should have had a strategy. Seeing Lee shouldn’t have blind-sided her with the fact that she didn’t know what to tell him. The word that had come to mind was Cylon, and it was wrong. Certainty that the Adama family tree could not be Cylons was ingrained in her already, but Lee _could_ be a...a copy, like she had to think Zak was.

She grimaced, and clenched her fist. Lee wasn’t. She felt it. She would have known—Zak was different. He’d never been able to explain why he suddenly wanted to fly Vipers, without any previous affinity at all. Without any affinity afterwards either.

Zak was something she needed to forget. It just didn’t help that her engagement ring had left a crease around her thumb after two years of wearing it.

Kara closed her eyes.

***

Lee didn’t feel good about walking off to find Kara without a single word ready on his tongue. She had a way of twisting his thoughts by not looking at him and if he thought any longer, he’d kick himself into a pulp and they’d be nowhere. So here he was, and it would probably be worse than nowhere, but he had to try.

She had found an empty passenger quarter and sat on a chair, halfway facing away. The line of her back was rigid, not straight as if she was at attention, but held tightly in the slight C-shape of a defensive stance. He could see her fingers, rubbing around the base of her thumb where he knew she’d worn Zak’s engagement ring before. It wasn’t there now.

But it didn’t matter, that. He didn’t know why she was thinking of Zak, and he didn’t need to. If she didn’t feel comfortable with him, that was his own fault, and the only option he had was an apology. “Kara,” he said softly, coming into the room.

Her face, when she turned her head towards him, looked farther away than it had ever been.

“I—I wanted to apologize.” It was hard to look at that face. “Well, no, I need to. What I said before you left, it was pretty unforgivable.”

The first clear emotion on her face was surprise (but not disagreement), and Lee had to think bitterly, he wasn’t so good at apologies. “I don’t know what came over me,” he said, “you’re my friend, Kara, I love you and I’m sorry.” Her eyes had fallen, and he didn’t want to wait and dare what emotion might be there. He couldn’t bear the thought of seeing hurt there, maybe, even now.

He was on his heels, going for the door, when he heard her voice. “Lee.”

Turning, he saw her grabbing the back of the chair she sat in. Her eyes caught his, then her head twisted slightly as if she didn’t know what to say. She sat back in the chair.

“Hey.” Lee’s voice came out quiet, realizing the faulty assumption he made about the cause of her distress. “Something happen down on Caprica?”

She didn’t look at him or answer, and his heart sunk a little. Not all wounds appeared on the surface, and not all success came without damage.

“Did you ever think Zak had changed?”

Lee blinked as Kara finally spoke. The missing ring, Caprica, the conflict in her face, refusal to look at him. Memories would do that. “Um, sure, yeah,” he stumbled for the right words. “I mean, he was always set on going his own way, then right before he met you, it had to be piloting.” He hesitated, stepping forward, feeling the emotions come down bitter on him. But Kara needed him to say everything. “He said later that he must have known you were coming somehow.”

A couple steps closer to Kara, he saw her fingers clench and twist, and heard all the undertones in her voice as she said, hard, “He suddenly heard destiny’s call.”

“That's what he thought,” Lee said, voice fading. He couldn’t let her know that he had felt the same call when they’d met, and it shouldn’t have bothered him, not when Kara needed something.

“Lee, on Caprica, something happened after I found the Arrow.” Kara rose from her seat, turning to face him. She’d straightened her back, a set look to her mouth. “I saw Zak.”

“What?” Lee was missing the context, clearly.

“Zak was there. On Caprica.”

Lee felt like he had to be staring through Kara, because he couldn’t seem to see her. He couldn’t seem to grasp how she could be connected to those words, the ones that didn’t make sense.

“Lee, Zak was a Cylon. He admitted it.”

He shook his head. “No, that can’t be, I saw him born. My father’s not—unless we’re all—no, Kara it couldn’t have been.”

“It was Zak, Lee.” Her eyes were sharp as they met his, finally holding his focus. “I don’t know what they did, if they just made a copy, or...”

Time was still working, right? This was still the world that Lee knew? “Kara, no! He can’t—that’s not how it works, or, then...am I a Cylon?”

“Frak, Lee, you can’t be,” she shot at him, and it almost sounded too quick for him. “I don’t know...”

“Kara, it can’t be,” Lee said again, putting his hand up.

 “He admitted it to my face, Lee!” Kara snapped, voice rough. “Do you think I wouldn’t remember every word of that? Do you think I don’t know enough to tell him apart from an impostor? It was Zak. He was a Cylon.”

Lee’s breaths were coming in too fast, as if he couldn’t control them. Memories flashed before his eyes, smiling little brother, brown eyes bright, hugging Lee, hugging their father, growing up, in the military, hugging Kara, kissing her, just being human. “No,” he said, voice breaking. “I just can’t—what does that mean? Could anyone be a Cylon, no matter what?"

He'd lost sense of Kara, his stomach feeling as if he'd just fallen off a cliff. Not even a year, and already the word 'Cylon' meant too much to him. He couldn't let it burrow into his life and claim a part of who he was, not when that life barely had meaning as it was. If Zak was a Cylon...if Zak was a Cylon...how could she know he wasn't? "Would I know if I was a Cylon?" he asked aloud, hearing his voice crack as he did so.

But he couldn't wait for her answer. "Kara, I can’t believe that—it just doesn’t—”

He missed her head shaking frantically, frustration emanating, until she grabbed his face and crushed her lips against his. It was what he’d hoped for over many years, and yet it didn’t register at first. Lee’s breath just stopped and his eyes closed. When she pulled back a little and he saw her again, there was a painful certainty in her eyes.

“You’re not a Cylon, Lee,” she said under her breath. “This, right here, us...this is still okay.”

“Kara, I don’t—” Lee’s world was falling apart, and he _wanted_ to believe her, because he wanted Kara in all her rightness.

“Don’t—” she shook her head, hands still on his face, fingers shaking almost imperceptibly.

For a moment it just felt like two magnets approaching, a sharp tug that defied common sense and demanded that he forget impossibilities. Kara always did demand just that of him. He remembered to breathe when she did, with a whispered “I need—” before she stopped and kissed him again.

It was easy to forget himself, kiss her back, reach his hands for her when she made a soft noise. Too real to be right, too real to be resistable, just like always. Then her hands were at his shirt, and his were at her pants, and it was to find proof of the reality that they hoped they had with each other at the very least.

They stumbled backwards to close the door, then Kara pulled him to the bed, clothes abandoned piece by piece, her mouth enveloping his and his hands safe on her soft breasts as she pushed him back against the mattress, both of them bare. Breathing achingly heavy, she slid herself down on him, fitting their bodies together too close for any disturbing thoughts to break through. Rocking together, trying to hold on, they fell towards each other with focus only on how _human_ this felt.

It was difficult, and it took too long, worry and fear and tension driving release so far away that they had to run for it. Muscles aching, at last, they broke, one after the other.

Kara shivered then, rolled to her side, her head on Lee’s arm as he lay still, unable to move. Lee had no thoughts, and it was pure escape.

Eyes closing for a second, he lost sense of everything for a few minutes. Then, reluctantly pulling back to the world, he realized that Kara still lay in his arms. They had finally come together, and she was soft, weary, vulnerable...he didn’t know what to do other than curl his arm closer around her, and take a deep breath of her comfortable smell as it still hung in the air around them. She had dozed off, and didn’t make a move.

A moment later he could feel her body tense, saw her eyes flicker open. They darted up towards his as he still looked at her, lying close on the bed. “I didn’t expect you to still be here,” he said under his breath.

She shifted, gaze pulling away. Taking a deep breath, she sat up on the edge of the rumpled bed. “Yeah, not a bad assumption.” She scrabbled for her clothes from the mishmash pile with his on the floor.

He realized too late that he shouldn’t have spoken at all. Reality was twisting away from him again, and tainted memories and deja vu hit him sharply. “So you wanted to make it absolutely clear what you were doing to me this time?”

She yanked on her shirt, head slowly shaking. “We don’t work, Lee.”

He grabbed her arm. “What about this?” What they’d just said without words. Her head shook faster and she pulled away from his hand, standing up. “Kara—” he sat up and pulled her arm, turning her to him. “Kara, I love you.”

Her eyes met his, making his heart fall with instant regret. “You’re sure you want to say that?” she said, just above a whisper.

He swallowed. “It’s as close to the truth as I could get.”

Kara shifted away from his grip, a dark look marking her features. “Feelings aren’t enough, Lee.”

He felt a rush of frustration, because he knew that. “Maybe we keep—keep hurting because we aren’t close enough for them to mean anything.”

“We don’t need to be this close to be good,” Kara said, looking at the shirt as she put it on, and he knew she meant before, meant the strangely appealing life they’d had post-apocalypse and pre-Caprica.

Words caught in his mouth as he realized that whatever she said, that part was true. They had been good. “Fine.” It snapped out of him with all the bitterness gathering in his heart. He slid past her to reach for his clothes, feeling cold and exposed. They didn’t look at each other, rearranging themselves as if alone. “So do we still talk about Zak?”

“Yes.” Kara turned to him, arms crossed over her chest as a guard. Lee breathed in, almost dressed again as she spoke. “I...I don’t know what to do about it.”

He looked up to see the broken truth in her eyes, and felt it mirrored deep in his heart. Lee’s world was shattered, memories all worthless, leaving him hollow. It made everything fall apart, and left him without words, pointless ones falling from his lips mingled with more than one meaning. “Well, we could pretend it doesn’t exist.”

“Lee, stop it.” Kara’s order broke from her throat with a little crack as she moved closer to him, a urgent need in her voice. “If you’re going to be flippant—” She stopped violently short, looking as if she was biting back a curse.

He reached for her hand as she turned away, desperate but firm. “Wait—” he said. “I’m not being flippant.” His stomach rolled over as he remembered how much it had hurt to lose everything that day, but Zak most of all. He shook his head, unable to meet her eyes with the confusion. “I just can’t think, I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“Why are we doing this?” Kara broke in, grabbing his shoulders. Her eyes burned damply, with all the risks plain there for anyone to see. And after everything they'd done, Lee couldn't help but see.

He shook his head, and if only he could think then maybe, maybe something would make sense. “I don’t know if there’s a point to anything, sometimes,” he said hoarsely. Finally he met her eyes again. “Let’s just forget, then." He saw the wavering in her eyes, more when he reached for her, needing to hold her close, to forget Zak and forget the miserable way they hurt each other.

“I—” she started, the words coming out pained, “Lee—”

She wasn’t pulling away, and it was all he could register. Wrapping his arms tightly around her, he kissed her, and she still felt real against him. Her hands kneaded into his back, mouth opening to him, and they were here again.

They’d gone full circle, and they were just holding on, because they couldn’t let it go the usual way with no place for them to run to hide. Lee held Kara in his arms and kissed her until he couldn’t kiss anymore, and until somehow she stayed in his arms, and they hid in that for as long as they could.

If anything was human, was real, it had to be this. Lee hoped to all the powers of the worlds that it meant something.

***

Zak would never have known that he hadn’t lost his pissy nature from childhood if not for the Cylons. He’d let them take credit for that, if it gave them comfort. After having his and Leoben’s and Boomer’s idea shot down multiple times with variations of the “But we don’t know God’s plan, how can we judge?” argument, he started losing the desire to fit in among them, whether they were his ‘family’ or not.

There was only so much faith he could take, and since he clearly wasn’t programmed not to, all he had to do was walk down into the forbidden sections of the central baseship. The empty halls didn’t frighten him, but the unknown of what lay beyond these chambers made his pulse quicken.

“What are you doing?”

He whirled on his feet at the gasping question. Boomer stood in the shadows, a horrified look on her face. “What?” he asked.

“We aren’t allowed here.” Her eyes were wide in the faint red glow.

“Oh really?” Zak answered, an eyebrow raised. “Wow, I had no idea, I just assumed that everyone else hated the aesthetics.”

Boomer glared at him.

“Why do you care?” he asked her, suddenly. “Don’t all the secrets make you itch?”

“We can’t just...” she trailed off.

“Use human logic?” Zak answered bluntly. “The collective can go frak itself right now, I want to know.” He turned and started walking down, the light growing dimmer as he went towards the forbidden halls.

Boomer jogged after him, hissing, “This is insane!”

“Which part of it?” he tossed back, reaching a closed door and resting his hand on the edge, unsure how to open it.

Behind him, Boomer took a deep breath. “Okay, so both sides are insane. And I’m not walking away, so I guess I’m with you.”

Zak gulped in a breath, realizing his heart was pounding. “Good. I think I’ll...I hope this isn’t a mistake.” He reached for the wall, resting his hand. With a near-silent slide, the door swung open, and Zak jerked back a little. Boomer swallowed.

“Well, it didn’t kill you straight off,” she commented.

“Thanks,” Zak tossed at her, almost rolling his eyes as he took a step forward. The room quartered off by this door was mostly dark, just the hint of a glow off in the distance.

Then suddenly a hand came down on his shoulder, and Zak yelped in surprise just as Boomer squeaked, whipping around to see Leoben gripping his and Boomer’s shoulders.

“You have lost your minds,” Leoben said, eyes wide, pulling them back from the door.

“That’s the point,” Zak snapped at him, pulling away his shoulder. Boomer wrenched back too, drawing closer to the open door.

“Blasphemy is your plan?” Leoben demanded, hands gesturing wildly.

Zak glanced to Boomer and swallowed.

“For now, yeah,” Boomer said with a detached shrug. She nodded to Zak and started walking into the room again.

“You can’t do this!” Leoben called after them.

“Frak that,” Zak muttered, and with Leoben behind them, he and Boomer moved without pause into the room.

It was round, dark, save for a glow across the way. Zak frowned, thinking maybe this was some kind of machine. He stepped forward, footsteps echoing in the chamber, eyes adjusting to the light. He didn’t let his feet lag, not caring if there was danger waiting, just needing to know. It was sitting there, just waiting for them. He could hear Leoben’s fast breathing, as if this was destroying something special. Zak couldn’t see it.

“It’s for resurrection,” Boomer breathed out as they drew closer.

Zak blinked and suddenly saw what she did, the glow rising from tubs around the floor, four of them. “God, it’s the other four!”

Boomer ran forward a little faster, stopping short in the middle of the four tubs, eyes like saucers as she looked around and then to Zak. His breath caught as he looked down to the backlit bodies waiting for resurrection.

“Leoben, look at this,” he called, before registering the first face.

Boomer gasped, but she wasn’t looking at the same tub. Zak forgot to breathe then and there. Sam Anders. Sam Anders was one of the four. All that time, all the guilt, all the moments before his final death on that planet, it...

“It’s Chief,” Boomer said, and Zak looked to her in confusion. “The Chief, from Galactica. And—and that’s Dee. They’re both Cylons, they’re both like us.” She put her hand to her mouth, gulping in a breath with wide eyes. Zak felt his hands shaking with fear, excitement, everything, and knew how she felt.

“This should not be happening,” Leoben said slowly, finally reaching them.

“It doesn’t matter now,” Zak said. The world had changed, and the knowledge was worth it. He walked to the other tubs, the ones that Boomer knew, and couldn’t tell anything. Then they turned to the fourth.

“Who is that?” Boomer asked.

The woman had copper-brown skin, defined features, black hair—she was gorgeous. But Zak and Boomer didn’t know her. Zak didn’t even know the others.

“Is that—is that Sam Anders?” Boomer asked, confused, looking past. “He was the captain of the C-bucs.”

“Still is,” Zak said, following her gaze, feeling a jolt of exhilaration and guilt alike as he saw the familiar face. “He was my captain, in the resistance.”

Boomer gave him a weird look. “You never said the resistance was famous.”

“It didn’t matter,” Zak murmured.

Leoben stepped in from the shadows, grabbing their arms and pulling them away. “You have accomplished nothing,” he said, sounding fearful and annoyed at the same time. “How does this help? What have you done? These secrets are supposed to be maintained for achieving God’s will in the best way possible.”

“We know a lot, actually,” Boomer said.

Zak gave her a look.

“They’ll all be on our side, once they wake,” she said, as Leoben dragged them out of the chamber and closed the door. “Chief and Dee, at least. They hate Cylons—they’ll be like us once they know.”

“And Anders will too,” Zak agreed. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be around the tub when that happened, when the shock and horror hit the resistance leader.

“Which means seven to five right there,” Boomer said, voice rising. “That’s majority, we could stop all this.”

Leoben stopped, letting go of them. Zak turned to face him, saw deep conflict on his face.

“With majority, we could find out what it all means, and why the Hybrid says Lee and Kara are so important to us.” Zak gave a brief shrug.

Leoben shook his head slowly, and Zak gritted his teeth, ready to argue the point with Boomer at his side. But Leoben just said, “We need more on our side than them alone.”

Boomer blinked.

Leoben nodded and exhaled. “Caprica Six. We should speak to her. She hasn't been like the others since her resurrection.”

“Okay,” Boomer said, surprised.

“That’s a plan, then,” Zak said, and almost felt like smiling. “So blasphemy wasn’t so terrible after all?”

Leoben gave him a withering look, but they walked off on the same page, and that was what mattered.

***

Kobol showed them the way to Earth, driving everything else into lesser importance until it was all over. Once the adrenaline faded, once Raptors were loaded, once they were coming back to Galactica, then Kara's mind was dragged kicking and screaming back to reality.

She stepped out, Lee just behind her, and gravity seemed twice as strong on her feet. The others walked away to give the news to the rest of the fleet, but she stood by the empty Raptor and just looked at her guilty comfort. It was like an awkward scene from one of the bad movies she'd stayed up too late to watch as a teen, except a thousand times worse because it actually counted for something. She just didn't frakking have the necessary words.

Lee found them first. “Is this your way of saying ‘we need to talk?’” He grimaced and pushed off the edge of the Raptor he leaned on.

“Don’t,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. She breathed in sharply, finding it hard to meet his eyes. “We can’t do...not on Galactica, not where everyone would know.”

Lee’s face was twisted by surprise. “You were planning on...”

“I stepped in this far, Lee, I might as well finish the job,” she said shortly. There was no way out of this if she turned her back, and gods, even if it was about Zak and the way her world had been yanked from under her feet, it had to be Lee.

“We can’t tell my father, not yet,” Lee said. “About anything, but especially not...Zak.”

“You can say his name, I won’t fall apart,” Kara said with dangerously dry intonation.

Lee didn’t smile at the comment, but they both breathed out at the same time. “Good, since we’ll have to try to figure it out.”

Kara nodded grimly. The confusion had been left behind on Kobol, and the realization that this was her responsibility was the only thing that had come back with her from the mission. Her responsibility for frakking all the aspects up.

The silence hung, until Lee said, suddenly, “Why’d they choose Zak? And why Sharon, why Leoben? Is it a plot against us, somehow?”

Kara shook her head, no thoughts ready. She felt too empty still. “That’s the point, Lee, it’s why we can’t avoid it. If they’re after us, you've gotta know I’ve got your back.”

He looked into her eyes, nodded slowly, security behind his gaze for the moment. “So,” he said, as if wrapping up a point. He offered his hand. “Friends then, as the only option that doesn’t break regs.”

Kara eyed him as she took his hand—slowly, but she shook it firmly. “Yeah. ‘Friends’, right.”

She hoped what she saw in his eyes was what she felt in her gut, that these were just words, and somehow they would manage to make this twisting of the truth work. If she was wrong, it would hurt a lot more, but for now she went on instinct.

Lee took a step forward, eyes dropping and then meeting hers again. “There was a distance, Kara, that I don't want back.”

Kara watched him carefully. She breathed out, cocking one eyebrow. “You know what that means.”

“Talking about the past, yeah, I figured that out,” Lee breathed out, half a groan.

Kara’s lip quirked a little at the oddity of it all. “Let’s try to get back into life then, Lee.”

He nodded, and reached for her hand. She clasped it, and didn’t pull back when he stroked her palm with his thumb. She gave a slight squeeze back, and then they walked towards the pilots room together, shoulder to shoulder. It was probably a miracle that they hadn't argued on this, so Kara would relish it, even if it didn’t last.

***

Zak didn’t like the way Caprica looked at him. She could give Leoben a scorching look, sure, he understood that. But what had he ever done to her? She seemed to regard Boomer with indifference, so at least one of them could have a chance.

“We want to help the humans,” Leoben tried to explain yet again, leaning into it and meeting her eyes with his determined ones.

“Do you?” Caprica’s sarcasm was undeniable, eyes and body language and tone all aligned in getting it across perfectly. “Why do I find that hard to believe? Oh, perhaps because when I dared to care about one single human, I was rejected as _damaged._ ”

Out of the corner of his eye, Zak saw Boomer’s face tighten, and he wondered but didn’t ask. Looking back to Caprica, he saw the bitterness in her eyes break for a second, and saw grief behind them. “You miss him,” he said automatically.

Caprica and Leoben both whipped towards him, but he stuck stubbornly to his guns. He’d heard about Baltar and her infiltration mission; the Cylons often talked about his interesting role in this cycle. Caprica’s surprise turned into a solid glare, ripping through him, and if he didn’t know why he was doing this, he would have backed away.

He met her eyes, and forced himself to remember that he knew that potent mixture of guilt and bitterness and grief and anger. “I know how you feel,” he said quietly, remembering Kara with empty regret.

“No, you don’t,” Caprica snapped back at him, arms tight across her chest. “I know who you are, and that you never betrayed anyone’s entire race on purpose.”

“You regret what happened,” Leoben jumped in, eyebrows rising with realization. Before Caprica could answer, he’d continued. “That’s not a flaw.”

For the first time since they’d started, Caprica’s stare didn’t have any preconceptions. Her eyes darted back and forth, arms loosening just a bit. “What is going on?”

Zak smiled to himself, and looked to Boomer. They were going to succeed here, he could feel it.

***

After Hot Dog asked during their first go at the firing round if he was "interrupting some personal grudge match”, Lee glanced at Kara and figured that maybe they should step it back a notch. Maybe.

Kara slammed a few more bullets into the Cylon targets after Hot Dog left, but Lee couldn’t. It hurt too much, trying to cover up that wound. He couldn’t picture the Cylons as including Zak, so his mind had decided that Zak was just a "different" kind of Cylon. It didn't mean anything, but was enough to fool his brain. Except, damn it all, he still couldn't think of shooting Zak.

He wasn’t sure what Kara was thinking, but though he could ask, he doubted he was ready for the answer. If they ever ended up alone together, she’d probably end up telling him then. Lee wondered what it was about her that made her talk only _after_ they’d frakked.

And they did. Despite trying to avoid it for appearances’ sake. Kara always found him right when the secrecy crushed him down and made him want to scream. “Don’t ask,” she’d say almost every time, pressing her body against his before either of their brains could engage. Finding a spot for a quickie wasn’t too challenging, and he couldn’t quite allow himself to scream, but gasping moans were good enough. It was too easy. Lying afterwards, a mess in more ways than one, Lee couldn't quite find fault with it. Kara would talk, spilling words out in an exhausted tone that hid any desperation. Listening, somehow Lee’s own tension dissipated.

Today, though, there was no tension, just irritation. They dropped the guns eventually, leaving without a word. Lee didn’t know where Kara went to, and he had work to do. They weren’t really together, but with so much more going on in their current relationship than just _them_ , it didn’t give him time to be bitter—and he was grateful for that. It didn’t make her withdraw, either, so as darkly ironic as it was, Zak was the only thing that could bring them together without disaster. Just not truly together, yet.

Lee and Kara weren’t the only ones with trouble on the ship, and Lee had to clench his hand into a loose fist as he walked down to the loud hangar bay. Chief couldn’t seriously expect to make his junk-slapped-together-in-a-ship-like-shape do anything but take up space on the deck, a slumping pile of metal and pointless hopes. Lee was about to open his mouth and comment on the people, too many of them, working on the ship.

Then he saw Kara’s head, the back of it poking out from under the steel and wires, sparks dancing around her hair. He paused. She pushed out from underneath, frowning, before she saw him.

“This is what you do with your spare time?” he asked without thinking.

“You have a better idea than forcing metal to get in shape?” she said without looking up at him, slapping two thin sheets together in her hand.

Of course he didn't, not when he had a hard time just focusing on his job. Watching her scoot back under the ship, though, with a welding torch in her hand, Lee realized that whether it flew or not wasn’t the purpose.

“This is such a waste of space,” he said under his breath as he crouched down, joining her under the metal frame.

“So waste space,” Kara shot at him with a look that had more meaning than her light words. “You’ve had practice.”

Lee coughed, and her eyes danced at him, even though they didn’t smile. He grabbed the paper plans defiantly and got to work figuring out what was going on. “Chief, what do you have joining up with the hydraulics here?” he called above the bustle of people working around the half-built ship.

They stayed too late on the deck, bending things into submission, making the metal take the force of their frustrations. Lee wouldn’t admit it, but it worked almost as well as frakking, as long as Kara was at his side. They didn’t have to speak; their actions worked for that. He was starting to realize that that was Kara’s way of life, and for the moment, it could be his too.

Kara clapped him on the shoulder when he suggested the carbon plating for the outside of the hull, and his face relaxed into almost a smile. They’d finished this.

She took it up into space, Lee there to watch her struggle for control, and then he saw her disappear. For a second terror overwhelmed his sight, and all the variables of the design flitted through his head as he called, “Kara?”

Her laugh was like water to a parched soul. “It’s a stealth ship, Lee,” she intoned over the radio.

It was the first genuine laugh they’d shared in a while.

After the christening ceremony that evening, she kissed him when they met in the head. Just a kiss, slow and sweet, and when they ended and breathed out, she walked off with a half smile still on her face. She was taking risks, and he wanted every little bit of it. Lee almost slept easily that night.

***

“It’s not looking good,” Caprica sighed. “Shelley is the only one who will listen to me at the moment. Nothing remarkable there.”

Boomer nodded, also unsurprised. Most of her surprise hung around the fact that they were making any progress at all. Especially with the Sixes, who in general she’d thought of as hardcore.

Caprica raised a wearily hopeful brow. “But perhaps we’ll be enough to make a change in the end. Our model can’t be too different among ourselves.”

Boomer looked across the room to where Zak and Leoben argued about some other part of the mission. “Does it bother you?” she asked Caprica without looking. “That you’re supposed to be copies, but you’ve had different lives?”

“It did.” Caprica’s voice was quiet, and Boomer turned to look at her. “But it didn’t last for long, Sharon. It...almost feels right, now. I can’t imagine any other way.”

Boomer smiled at her; a little weak, but everything was. She couldn’t seem to find fervor to try harder, and her mind kept falling back to comparisons. Nothing could bother her more than that. She turned her eyes back to the others. “Well, the Twos were all in agreement, so you’re probably right about the Sixes in the end.”

“The Twos all have faith,” Caprica said, with a caution that seemed carefully chosen to avoid sounding like condescension. “That’s a different kind of motivation.”

“The Hybrid, yeah,” Boomer said. “And what she says about Starbuck and Apollo. It’s all they think about, as far as I can tell.”

Caprica tipped her head. “No one ever explained how that works.”

“They’re from the fleet,” Boomer said. She gritted her teeth, let the words come out without emotion. “My friends, for a while. And now they’re supposed to be important.”

Caprica made a small noise at the back of her throat. “I thought that about a man once, but he died.” Her tone turned steely. “Though granted I didn’t consult the _Hybrid_.”

“Who?” Boomer asked. No one had ever told her why Caprica came to their side so easily.

“Gaius Baltar,” the other Cylon sighed.

Boomer turned to her, feeling strange. “Baltar died?”

Caprica’s brow narrowed in confusion. “Yes. During the attacks.”

“No, no he didn’t,” Boomer answered, slowly but sure about that point at the very least. Her mind was getting stuck on the idea of Baltar being important to the Cylons, and how Caprica could possibly not know that he was alive.

Caprica reached out and gripped her arm. “What do you mean? Tell me, Sharon.”

Boomer suddenly realized that Caprica had left a human life behind too. That almost made warmth run through her veins again, like when she’d seen Chief in the resurrection tub. They were both the same kind of damaged, if that was the word the other Cylons wanted to choose. It wasn’t so bad.

***

Kara joined him by the board of pilots, looking at the list of names. Too many times they’d been erased, and another one had been marked in. Too many times they’d been rearranged for the sake of having to struggle to fill all the posts. Lee kept rubbing at his eyes, hoping the list would look better each time he glanced back up.

“Problem?” Kara asked, arms loosely over her chest as she stood.

“We’ll have to start flying longer missions.” Lee let the words fall with his exhale.

He noticed her head turn towards him, a little cock to the side as she said, “Better you telling them than me.”

Lee gave an emotionless half laugh as his gaze met hers, at the dark smile hiding behind her eyes. “That’s not the only reason you’re glad not to be in command,” he commented with a look.

She breathed in shortly, but didn’t look away. “No.”

For a few seconds they stood, eyes looking back to the list of people under their command, at their whim. Even if their personal lives fell apart as Lee suspected that Kara thought they would, they could still do this. Protecting the Fleet against the Cylons, even if...

“Is it any easier now?” Lee asked, just above a whisper. He hadn’t thought about it, just asked before he could choose not to. She could take it to mean before, when she’d taught these Galactica pilots with a grimace of bad memory; she could take it to mean now, with the worries from the disaster on Caprica. Either interpretation, either answer, it didn’t matter—it would hurt.

Kara crossed her arms a little tighter, but after a few moment she said quietly, “I don’t know.”

Lee nodded slowly, and they stood side-by-side a few minutes longer. It was a pain they needed to have.


	3. Chapter 3

Zak stood on the edge of the room, running his hand through his hair. Boomer, Sixes, Twos, even a Four...it was a mess. Leoben stood opposite most of the group, passionate in his orations about the utter importance of this. Zak didn’t feel it like that. It was something deep telling him that Kara and his brother were what the Cylons needed, not something he knew how to articulate. Leoben had it all worked out and could spout it forth until the end of days. At the moment he was facing mainly Natalie (a Six) and a sole Two who disagreed.

“Why do we not just take the two of them and figure out the possible destiny apart from everything,” Natalie demanded yet again, rolling her eyes long and wide.

“Do you know what their destiny is?” Leoben shot right back. “We shouldn’t make _any_ move before we have all the pieces, that’s simple strategy.”

“We’ve already made moves, before this destiny was prophesied,” the Two pointed out, arms crossed over his chest.

“Prophesied,” Natalie repeated, making air quotes with her fingers. “Remember, this is still all interpretation.”

Leoben’s frustrated gaze only lasted a second before he had words again, and the argument carried forward.

Zak couldn’t help but think of numbers, how soon they couldn’t be arguing this on an individual level. The idea seeped through the entire Cylon race, now, and it would need full acknowledgment. Zak thought of Cavil and D’Anna and Doral, and he frowned and rubbed his hair back again. Everything moved fast for them.

“You’re not joining him?” Caprica asked quietly, coming to approach him with curious eyes.

Zak shook his head. “Too many things to think about. I already know we’re right, and I don’t know how to...get everyone else to think it too. That’s for Leoben.”

Caprica dipped her head for a second, following his gaze to the gesturing group. “Perhaps it would be easier if it was you.”

Zak gave her a look.

“Not in getting the message across,” Caprica amended, with a purse of her lips. “Just...you’re only one, but now even the models are disagreeing everywhere you look. Unity is a vain dream, I worry. No matter how right it feels, I fear what we’ve become.”

Zak watched progress in front of him, the evolution of their child nation, born from humanity and attempting to reach beyond it, and yet now drawn back to it. The only fear he let himself feel was the fear of failure and collapse. “I don’t,” he said to Caprica quietly.

***

“This is getting insane, Kara.” The door to the head hadn’t opened in fifteen minutes, but Kara still wouldn’t cross to his side of the room from where she sat on the bench, blotting her hair with the towel.

“And here it is...” She almost made her sigh a snap.

Lee ground his jaw for a second, because damn she was right, this had to come. Pegasus hadn't been any kinder to them than the rest of the fleet, and he'd have been lying if he said he hadn't noticed emotions starting to simmer. He bit back the urge to ask her _the_ question, hating how much he feared the answer, and just went with, “What if the prisoner had been Zak.”

Kara whipped her towel downwards, and didn’t turn or answer. “Then Admiral Cain would have told your father, and the whole damn thing would have been over just like that.”

Lee crossed the head in a few steps, grabbed the towel out of her hand. “Just like that?”

“I’m not going to talk about something that didn't happen.”

“No, Kara, that’s not how it works.” Lee clenched the towel in his hand. “I don't care if it's confusing, it's better to be honest..”

“Right, like that’s worked so well for us,” Kara said under her breath as she stood up to grab another towel.

The abrupt change of subject didn't surprise him, not with Kara. He wouldn't be surprised if everything was connected in her brain. “It did," he said, and let the words stay there. “It did. It’s why we’re here.”

“You told Admiral Cain about us so she’d transfer us together?” Kara asked snarkily.

“No, _here_. We could have lied and run away, but we didn’t, and nothing got destroyed.” He bit back the ‘yet’. Maybe what had happened with 'Gina' wasn't really relevant to them, but she'd pushed the two together and somehow they fit.

“I’m confused enough.” Kara finally turned and met his gaze. “I’m not adding your father’s questions to that.”

“Confused about what?” Lee asked, this time truly lost.

She just shook her head and turned away, grabbing her other things from the floor, and Lee was afraid he knew exactly what that meant. The base of the wall around her was already constructed, and he was looking at it now, but perhaps he would trip over it tomorrow. He wanted to break it to pieces with his hands, but time, time was always against him, more than Kara ever could be.

He glanced at the door, wondered how long they’d have before someone would interrupt. These few moments weren’t worth as much as they'd been on Galactica. “So what if we're stuck here forever?”

“I don’t know, Lee,” Kara said as she walked past him. “Maybe we just stay confused. We have work to do.”

Lee watched her walk out and knew he couldn’t follow. The sinking feeling that he’d been suppressing with the good of the moment came back. It came back hard. This time they were on a slow road to hell, and it wasn’t any better. He wasn’t sure he could take it.

***

Boomer was never going to get comfortable with walking these halls if she kept seeing him everywhere. No one had ever suggested approaching Cavil with their plan, and that was for a reason so clear that speaking would almost make it less so.

She jerked every time he walked by her.

This time he didn’t just walk on. “Eight.” The way he said her name made her feel small, and she had to bite down tight on her jaw to give herself a jolt of stubbornness.

“What?” She glanced briefly at him but didn’t stop walking.

“You’ll give me an honest answer, unlike your older brethren,” Cavil said, keeping stride with her. “What the hell is going on?”

“Nothing,” Boomer said slowly, frowning.

“' _Nothing_ ' holds your attention too much, then. What is it?” His dark eyes met hers even as she tried to look ahead as she walked. “Memory problems?”

 “We’ve just been discussing the Plan, that’s all,” Boomer said swiftly.

Cavil grunted. He was silent at first, his stride less aggressive. Finally he said under his breath, “There’s no need. The Plan only needs one thing, and no discussion will help us get it any sooner.” He gave her a look and turned to walk back the way he’d come.

Boomer crossed her arms tightly, hugging herself as she knew exactly what he meant. She worried that he was right, and that their group was taking too long, and the human race would be destroyed by the time they got their act together. Why couldn’t they just agree? Why did they have to be so human in their disagreement?

The question made her stomach twist just a little in discomfort, and she breathed out. Chief sprang to her mind automatically, but this time the memory hurt a little less. Thinking of humans meant thinking of Chief, which meant thinking of Cylons because he was like her. She’d always wanted to believe Leoben, and so maybe sharing Cylonity meant something. Maybe they’d all been connected forever.

If only they could hold out against Cavil long enough to find solid answers.

***

Kara felt as if her gut had been torn from her when she gave Cain’s eulogy, standing over the coffin of a woman she barely knew. A woman who’d caused conflict as much as she’d brought a strange hope for Kara. She had war in her, and despite Cain’s utter hatred of the Cylons, Kara was yearning for a fight again.

She got the corpses; she hadn’t gotten the battle yet. And even the enemy she could despise from a distance still wasn’t a black and white picture to her mind. The edges blurred, and so all she could fight at was the clear center. It wasn’t enough.

Her uniform weighed down on her shoulders, ribbons and pins symbolizing more than she knew how to handle with all the knowledge spinning in her head. She kept stuffing it away and it kept coming right back up. She needed a good lay—she always did, nowadays. And she didn’t know why she kept turning to Lee, just adding to everything; maybe because he let her, and she didn’t have an answer to that conundrum either. It was probably their backwards way of saying something important, like how he looked at her like she was a drug he couldn’t resist, but gods only knew if Kara understood what was really going on.

Pegasus was quiet. Cain’s people were toasting recklessly to her life down below, leaving the pilots’ quarters drab and empty. Kara clenched her jaw as she walked in, closed the hatch, flicking at the buttons on her jacket.

She saw Lee lying on one of the lower bunks, head on the pillow, one knee propped up and the other lying limp. The day teased at her mind, the memory of more than just Cain’s death. Adama’s reluctant submission of his command, the strange rumors about Cain that had only just started to circulate when Kara got sent on her recon mission, returning with the pictures that silenced all talk until battle could commence. Whatever had been stirring, no one would know now.

Then Lee had nearly been lost in the heat of battle, floating in space, and Kara still didn’t know what to say about it. She thought she might move on, walk past his bunk, climb into her own and breathe out her tension as much as she could. It wouldn’t work, but the effort might put her to sleep.

Her eyes found his, though, as they stared blankly at the top of the bunk above him. The emptiness caught her, almost a grey shade over his blue eyes. Kara paused, her hand resting on the ladder of the bunk. He lay so flatly, as if without an ounce of strength left; not weak, just without the fire that so often moved him.

“Lee?”

He didn’t look at her, and her feet couldn’t move on.

“Lee, you okay?” Again he didn’t answer, and suddenly the emptiness in Kara’s body was forgotten. The words came quick, short. “Hey—Lee?”

She saw him swallow, lump in his throat rising and falling without sound. So she stood there, looking straight at him as she asked quietly, “Lee, are you okay?”

It wasn’t a surprise when his head slowly shook. But the raspy voice that came from his throat bit deep into her heart. “That moment there, when I found the hole in my suit, I was afraid to die.”

That his tone made it seem like something faulty had Kara’s hair standing on the back of her neck. “You’d better be, godsdamnit,” she said under her breath, lowering herself to sit on the edge of the bunk. “You’re not allowed to—” She stopped and swallowed, eyes darting upwards before falling back.

“No...Kara...” The words seemed to be torn from him as he kept staring straight up, not at her, not at anything, except something that neither of them could see. “I didn’t want to wake up on that resurrection ship.”

“Lee, you’re not a Cylon,” Kara said, voice threatening to leave the words breathy as her vocal cords tightened.

“Shouldn’t say that when you don’t know.” Lee’s eyebrow lifted slowly.

“I know,” Kara answered. The look on his face, or the lack thereof, made her unable to move. It drew her in so there was no way she could not care. When Lee said nothing, she had to respond, “And you don’t have to face it, you’re back alive.”

Lee shook his head, finally turning towards her just slightly. It was just a shell of the Lee she knew, and she realized that she wasn’t the only one who had lost something today. “I’m afraid to die,” he said, just loud enough for her to hear, wavering on the verge of a whisper. “But I’m afraid to be alive again. I don’t know how much I want to fight for that anymore.”

Kara felt her fingers twitch, and she curled them in on themselves. “Gods, Lee,” she said in a shaky breath.

He closed his eyes, not looking at her anymore, still lying back.

Kara had to swallow hard, and everything she’d said before, how he couldn’t die and she had his back and they needed each other, all of it, hit her where it hurt most. “Gods,” she whispered.

Lee still didn’t answer.

Kara didn’t know what else to do, so she leaned back against the bunk and didn’t move. Her hand moved to rest on Lee’s, making sure that he was still _there_ , but for the first time he didn’t even shift.

It was all too clear for confusion now, but the clarity was dark and Kara almost wanted the frustration back.

***

The more Zak talked, the more he had to wonder who he was convincing. Who needed this hope more, the Cylons or him? Some days he wasn’t sure, knowing only that the hope was all he was clinging onto in life, and if he was alone in that, life might not be worth it.

But his stubborn grasping onto it was exactly what was needed with the Threes.

“I don’t want to be pushed to repeat myself, but the word still works,” said one, pacing away from him with long strides. “This is insanity. We know exactly what we need the humans for, and it has nothing to do with what our _pilot_ told anyone, cryptic or not.”

“One of you was in the Fleet,” Zak pointed out, batting the air with his hand. “You saw D’Anna’s tape, can you really say that Starbuck and Apollo are not important?”

“To the Fleet,” the Three answered sharply.

“Then why would the Hybrid tie us so closely to them?”

“Do I need to explain the word ‘coincidence’, or do you at least remember that much of your identity?” snapped the Three.

Zak raised his hand to his brow for a second, breathing in harshly. “Don’t you have faith in God?” Silence was all the response he got, and they just looked at each other, and there wasn’t really an answer to that question. “Isn’t it possible he might have a prophet like the Hybrid?”

The Three breathed out, still looking slightly annoyed.

“Just...look at where all the Final Six ended up with their unconscious driving them,” Zak said. “Who they ended up near. Then try to tell me that Starbuck and Apollo are not part of our fate.”

The Three just stared at him, and Zak thought she probably saw right through his insecurities. But they didn’t matter; he had to believe that still.

***

He had more blood on his hands. Lee would never wash it clean. The longer he survived, the more he had to accept this. Leaving the ship where the black market squatted in the dark, he felt the brief life threatening to drain out of his veins again. And yet, he hadn’t thought he had any still in him anymore until he pulled out that gun.

Then, he’d known that Kara had been right not to give up on him. If only—as long as she truly hadn’t, he thought. Lee hadn’t seen her in days, and he wasn’t sure now who had been avoiding whom.

His heart felt sick, and when he finally found her standing alone in the pilots’ assembly, it only felt worse. And yet, the way his life had been going, it was the lesser of two evils to face this. To face that he needed her, and he didn’t deserve that anymore. “Kara,” he said quietly, not knowing what else to say.

She turned and he couldn’t read her look. “Yes, sir?”

The day hit him hard, and dragged with it the past weeks, and he felt heavy. “Kara, I need you to forgive me,” he stumbled out, trying to close the distance with a few steps. “I know I don't deserve it, but Kara...” He couldn’t say it.

But her eyes glanced up to meet his, and he saw dark worry there, and hoped she could see the emptiness he felt trying to choke his own heart.

“I don’t care if anyone guesses, I need you, please,” Lee said, hating how low he was having to stoop.

Something broke in Kara’s face then, and she stepped forward. “Lee, it’s—”

He reached for her, clasping her to his chest, wrapping his arms around her. “Don’t say it’s all right, because it’s not.”

Lee couldn’t see her face, but Kara reached up a hand to curl around his head, hold him for a second. He breathed out, clinging to her, and felt her fingers softly stroke the back of his neck. A lump caught in his throat, making his breath choke. “I’m worried, and I’m guilty, and I’m afraid,” he admitted in a low tone, “and I’m not sure I want to care anymore. But gods, Kara, I still care about you, and if I lose you because I’m stupid...”

“Lee,” Kara started, pulling back just enough to look at him. Her lower lip quirked. “If stupidity was enough to ruin us, we’d be doomed.” She leaned in and kissed him lightly, as if to make him accept the fact.

Lee couldn’t feel empty anymore. “So,” he said under his breath, as they stood with their foreheads close to each other. “What’s the non-stupid thing to do now?”

“Frak if I know,” Kara whispered. “Talk?”

As Lee took a deep breath, he felt his sluggish life stir just a little, and he would do anything to keep it from dying. “How about living first?” he asked after a swallow.

Kara gave him a small grin, her arm curving around his waist. “Well, I can’t call your prioritizing stupid.”

“Good,” Lee managed to say before kissing her. She murmured something against his mouth, but it didn’t matter, not when once again he was entwined in her arms.

Somehow in this moment they were safe.

***

Baltar was the president. Not that it was what mattered to Lee, but it was all that he would say about the situation. Kara pulled him into an embrace the first night after they lost the president, when he tossed and turned in the bunk across from hers. She dragged him to the showers to break the mood, and he broke willingly in her arms, face beautiful when he came.

But even after he kissed her with gratitude, with love, with everything that they still kept secret—even then he crawled back into his bunk in silence.

“I can’t believe Baltar is president now,” he muttered again the next day in the pilots room.

Kara found him alone after CAP, and it had begun to weigh on her as well, and she ran her fingers down his spine until he turned and kissed her hard. They both broke that time, falling to pieces in each other’s arms, gasping to breathe each other in.

“I don’t believe it either,” she said quietly, before he had time to repeat himself once more.

With a choke, he gripped her tightly, skin against skin.

If he cried, she didn’t see the tears. She couldn’t cry, but she knew why he would. Roslin’s cancer had finally taken her away, and Lee hadn’t realized before now how much he counted on her. Kara hadn’t realized how much comfort she could give until now. It almost atoned for everything she’d taken from him.

He didn’t reference Baltar inheriting the presidency again the next day. They were both learning how to move on, better and better with each tragedy. Truly moving on. It didn’t feel like denial anymore.

***

“Want to bet on how many times he can call us idiots?” Boomer asked under her breath as the Cylons made their way to what they used as a council chamber.

“Either way he wins,” Zak muttered.

The two fully-aware members of the Final Six had been surprised at how out-stubborned they were by the First Six they’d drawn to their sides. After all, both Zak and Boomer couldn’t quite shake the feeling that they were human, so they were attempting to save their identity. Boomer couldn’t help but wonder just how much the First Six just looked at humans like children in need of rescue.

They took their places around the oval table, and for once they needed all twelve chairs. Not because every model was present, but because more than one representative had asked to be present. For the human supporters—Natalie and Caprica for the Sixes, Boomer and Zak among the Final Six, a Leoben and another Two, Simon, and a single Three. Cavil, and a single representative each for the Threes and Fours and Fives sat at the far end, resolute.

Natalie didn’t wait for any opening remarks, just dove into the topic at hand with sharp attention. Cavil didn’t even blink before he had an answer, and had Caprica not also prepared a statement, he might have won the first round with preparedness.

“All you have is the Hybrid,” Cavil said then with slow emphasis, marking the final word with a downward thrust of his hand.

“And faith that God is speaking to us,” Caprica objected.

“Did you hear literal words?” Cavil sneered.

“That’s not the point,” said Zak. Since it had been the point that he and Boomer had both argued about for some time, it wasn’t surprising that he had the answer. “We didn’t exactly get clear instructions to destroy the human race, did we?”

The objecting Five and Three shared a look while Cavil twisted his mouth, staring at the rebels who outnumbered him.

“This movement is too large to be halted by a single model with a narrow mind,” Leoben muttered with hard eyes.

Boomer groaned, and wished Leoben understood ‘tact’ better. But his hostile bluntness didn’t halt the others.

“Our Plan was ‘God’s will’, so you all agreed,” Cavil said, pointing his finger at all of them, even as his tone openly straddled blasphemy.

“Hatred is a sin against God,” Caprica said. “Murder is a sin.”

“Genocide is a sin,” Boomer spoke up, just pointing out the extreme.

“And you know that’s what it is,” Zak said as Cavil opened his mouth with an objection they could all guess the content of. “If it wasn’t, if they weren't more than animals, the Final Six couldn’t have believed ourselves human.”

“We misunderstood God’s will the first time,” Caprica said in a smoother tone.

“We’re humanity’s children,” Natalie followed with a nod of acknowledgment to Caprica. “And we need to make peace.”

Cavil sat speechless. Boomer could see the gears turning in his head, in a way that he would have thought more literal than most of them. She could see his determination not to believe, and his determination to fight this for as long as the humans kept escaping. But he couldn’t stop them with words.

Boomer wasn’t sure if it was a good ending or not.

***

Kara could almost forget Zak. Somehow, in her hasty attempts that had seemed vain, she’d really done it. From death to death, it was put away, and all that was left was this...thing...she had with Lee. This support-and-comfort-and-frakking that couldn’t be defined because it was still the one thing that terrified them. They could do anything, as long as they didn’t name it.

They’d even talked about it, in a way. It confused Kara. But somehow she’d gotten used to being broken, and so none of this had been as hard for her as it had been for Lee. He’d fallen apart after she’d come back from Caprica, and some instinct had made him reach for her because she had reached first.

Kara could forget Zak, she realized, because everything related to him had led to Lee, and the problems that were all _theirs_ now. Except one...and she was going to remedy that right now.

They were still on Pegasus, but holding back wasn’t as much of a priority. Especially not now. So neither of them were surprised when Kara stopped by the new commanders’ quarters, entering to see Lee looking almost at home there, sitting with a thousand papers in front of him, the weight of his new pins present in the very atmosphere.

“Were you surprised?” he asked, on looking up to see her.

“Knowing your father, no,” Kara answered, walking forward, hands in her pockets.

“You will be at this,” Lee said, gesturing to the paper directly before him. Kara could recognize promotion papers, even upside down. “I thought about making you my XO, of course.”

“But you didn’t,” Kara finished for him, taking an opposite seat. “I'm getting behind this trend in brains.”

Lee shrugged. “So you know the reasons.”

“Am I CAG?” Kara asked, leaning back in her chair.

“Of course,” Lee answered, glancing back up at her.

Kara nodded, and leaned forward. “Good. Because, for the sake of your reputation, which I assume you’re still dressing as unbiased for the public eye...well, better this suggestion come from an officer, not just a lowly pilot.” She breathed in deep.

Lee’s brow narrowed. “What is it?”

“Back on Caprica, the resistance.”

“I remember, you told me.” Lee nodded.

“I didn’t tell you everything,” Kara said with a grimace. “I told you I didn’t plan on leaving them behind. I didn’t explain that I had an alternate plan.”

“Oh.”

“I told their leader, Anders, that I’d meet them at a FTL rendezvous in six months, if they were still alive,” Kara said. Sometimes she’d wished to forget saying that, and the wish had grown in intensity with every passing week—the more she remembered, the more she had to prepare to grieve. “That’s coming up fast.”

“You think anyone will be there waiting?”

He’d hit on exactly where it hurt. Kara swallowed, and shook her head, remembering Helo, remembering Anders, remembering the dozens of others who looked at the ship as an escape they couldn’t catch. “I saw their faces. They all knew they had targets painted right on their frakking chests. But Lee, Helo’s there, and I want to think that maybe some of my dumb luck rubbed off after all this time. And I really...well, it was a promise to them, and I’m not backing out.” She caught Lee’s eye, held it. “Even if I have to steal a Raptor.”

He nodded, leaning over his knees, tapping his finger on the table. “You want me to assign a team, then?”

Kara wished it was that easy. The more she’d thought, though, the more it hit her that if there was any hope at all, it lay in speed and luck. Raptors might board whatever ships had impossibly escaped from Caprica, but if they were followed, it would be too late by then. Kara wasn’t doing some half-assed plan, no way.

“Come on, Lee, that sounds like one of your plans, not mine,” she said, taking in a breath as she tried to keep it light, tried to keep that vain hope still involved. “No. I...I want you to take the Beast in.”

Lee’s eyes widened, as she’d expected. Yet before a word could escape his mouth, she could see that he wanted to say yes. She smiled firmly to herself, ready to make a case where she was sure of everyone involved. This thing she had with him kept making things simpler.

***

The Cylons were at a stalemate, and Zak didn’t see a way out. Leoben sat by the Hybrid even now, looking for a hint, something, anything. Zak just had to move. Human memories bothered him, but they were almost comfortable.

“I got used to sparring with Kara during my training,” he admitted to Boomer, and he could say Kara’s name now without it making him hurt. Few things could hurt him now, but it wasn’t as good as it sounded.

Boomer nodded. “I know, I was in the military too.”

“Do you mind then?” Zak asked, shrugging.

She’d shaken her head and grabbed for the pads, and as soon as he was moving again, the world felt more in touch. He was still running uphill, but he could count on his endurance to make it to the top, however far out of reach it still looked.

He hit the pads hard, left and right and left again, as Boomer stood with a tight look, moving by routine.

“Zak, I was thinking,” she said after a minute, swiping at him with a pad.

“Hmm?”

“What we saw in the tanks...”

They hadn’t told the others. Only Leoben knew, and even he tried to forget. It wasn’t God’s will to know, and they’d broken that.

“You said that Sam Anders was part of the resistance on Caprica, right?” Boomer asked, still holding the pads and sparring back and forth. “So he’s still alive, and doesn’t know all of who he is.”

Zak frowned. “Yeah.”

“Look, maybe this is a chance for us to tip the balance,” Boomer said, striking harder as her words grew firm. “We can’t stop Cavil from attacking the Fleet, but no one’s paying attention to the planet.”

Zak missed a step, and her pad hit him on the face. But as he stood and shook it for a second, he still couldn’t make sense of her words. “What does that have to do with anything? What are we supposed to do with that?”

“Leave Caprica,” Boomer said. “I checked, there’s only one baseship there. If we can speak to their Hybrid, we can leave, and the other Cylons will have to follow. That way the resistance survives, and we have proof that we mean what we say.”

“Proof for Cavil?”

“For the humans,” Boomer said. “Although, yeah, it would work for both. But even if we somehow get everyone to tell the humans about our shared destiny, what reason would they have to believe? We pull back and let them escape, then we have that on our record.”

Zak nodded slowly, hitting more deliberately. “And Cavil and the rest left on his side, they know we’re serious. Then what?”

Boomer’s mouth tightened, and she gave him a firm look. “Then we push our point.”

Zak stared at her, at the hardness on her face. It was very Cylon, that look. The plan was Cylon. But a shiver ran through him as he realized that behaving like Cylons was the only way they were going to get the chance to be human again.

“It’s a good plan,” he said.

“I know,” Boomer answered.

Zak breathed out, and they continued sparring, thinking but not speaking.

***

“Kendra thinks I’m insane,” Lee said, referencing his XO as he stood with Kara by the Pegasus white-board, looking over their plan. “Dad came right out and said it.”

“Yeah, well, it is insane,” Kara said. Arms crossed over her chest, she tapped her fingers against her elbow. “But it’s not going to be dangerous. Pointless, maybe.”

“I don’t know, maybe they’re still alive,” Lee said. Kara had gone over exactly who she’d left, who they were, as if trying to get him to talk her out of going back for them. The more she said, the more Lee thought that if anyone was going to survive another few months, it would be the Caprican resistance.

Kara didn’t answer him, still biting her lip.

“Sir?” Lee and Kara turned, saw Kendra Shaw standing at attention, lips pursed. “Jump coordinates are set, and all people are at battle-stations.”

“Thank you,” Lee said, saluting back at her.

Kendra turned on a dime and left with crisp motions.

“You have no idea how lucky you are that people respect you,” Kara said with a cock of one eyebrow.

“Said the pot to the kettle,” Lee answered her, with half a smile. She barely responded, and he nudged her hand with his. He believed in her more than this mission, but he didn’t disbelieve in the mission. If they succeeded, this would be just what the Fleet needed to recover from the hope that Cain had ripped away just after providing it.

“Let’s get it over with, then, for frak’s sake,” Kara breathed out, hand clenching as she turned to follow Kendra.

Together they walked to Pegasus CIC, where everyone stood at attention. Kara stood opposite the mission table from Lee, light reflecting on her eyes, tense as they were. Lee took a deep breath and looked around. He thought about making a speech about survival, about never leaving people behind...but this was Pegasus. He didn’t have to think too hard. “Major Shaw, will you give the order to authorize the start of rescue mission Alpha?”

Kara rested her hands on the table as Kendra gave the orders to the pilots, ready to fly out if Cylons waited. The coordinates were waiting, hopefully as safe as when Kara had given them. But hopefully they weren’t empty either.

“All ready to jump, sir,” Kendra reported back.

Lee looked at her, then glanced over to the FTL controls. “Mr. Hoshi, take us in.”

He didn’t realize until the ship started pulsing that he was mirroring Kara’s stance, hands spread just over a shoulder-width apart, leaning over the table as if it would tell them the future. Then Pegasus jumped in.

“We’re at the coordinates, sir,” Hoshi said, clicking at his console.

“Anything on DRADIS?” Lee needed the perfect answer.

“No Cylon targets, sir, but...” Hoshi paused. “An unknown object, but there’s a signal.”

Lee met Kara’s eyes.

“It’s...I think it’s a Colonial frequency, but it’s fragmented,” Hoshi said.

“Contact the ship if you can,” Lee said, breathing in deeply.

“They’re contacting us, sir,” Hoshi said.

“Patch it through.”

Lee wasn’t holding his breath, but it almost felt like it. The radio crackled. Everyone was looking up.

 _“This is Colonial 43...something...damn, sorry, we’re Colonial humans. Who is this?”_

Half a grin crossed Lee’s face, and he picked up the phone. “This is Commander Lee Adama of the Battlestar Pegasus, from the Colonial fleet on a rescue mission to Caprica. Who is this?”

 _“Gods, Pegasus? How did—is Kara there? This is Lt. Karl Agathon, and I have a Samuel T. Anders with me, and a few dozen other people ready to get the hell off this cramped ship.”_

Kara had never looked so relieved—Lee felt his smile start to match hers. “Well, if you want to bring your ship into our docking bay, that’s certainly something we can do.”

 _“Will do, Commander. Tell Kara I owe her a thousand.”_

The transmission ended, and an unexpected cheer rose in CIC.

“Your plan came through,” Kendra said, looking to Kara.

“Damn right it did,” Kara said, smile looking about ready to split her face with joy.

“Colonial cruiser docking right about now, sir,” Hoshi said.

“Well, Captain, ready to gloat?” Lee asked.

Kara just grinned and slapped his shoulder as she rounded the table. The world wasn’t just livable, it was almost bright again. Lee’s hopes had come to fruition.

The deck crew was chattering when he and Kara made it down, saw the battered Colonial ship being pulled out of the airlock, Raptors making space for it on the hangar deck.

“I don’t know how they survived, sir,” Chief Laird said as Lee came up to where the ship was coming to a halt. “Just looking at the exterior, it’s amazing it can sustain life.”

But Lee didn’t bother to consider that. The door opened, and out came a tall man in dirty military fatigues. Kara’s face lit up and she ran up to him.

“Gods, Karl,” she said, pulling him in for a sharp hug.

 “You have no idea how good it is to see you,” Helo said with a long sigh.

“Just what I was thinking, actually,” Kara said, grinning up at him. Lee could hear the emotion in her voice.

People were tumbling out of the small ship, dusty and bruised but alive. Not even a hundred of them, but Lee didn’t care. They were more proof that humanity could survive, and he could almost forget that he had once considered that a pointless goal.

Finally they were all safe on deck, and last out came a man that Lee recognized from ads so long ago. Samuel Anders. Kara turned from where she stood with Helo, and with a quick grin, ran up to him and gripped him in a hug.

“Can’t believe you both made it,” she said, as Anders smiled down at her. “Who’d you sell your soul to, to make it happen?”

“As if I would have done that,” Anders said back at her with the same tone. “I hadn’t counted on there being a point to surviving long enough.”

“Sure,” Kara answered, the identical level of mocking in her voice. “Because you were all huddled here even though you didn’t believe I’d make it. Nope, don’t believe it.”

Anders grinned and gave her a squeeze. “It’s just good to be here,” he said, a hint of weariness in his voice.

“Is this everything, then?” Lee asked, stepping forward.

Helo nodded. “It’s everyone.”

“Oh,” Kara said, glancing between the two resistance leaders. “Karl, Anders, this is Commander Lee Adama.”

Anders turned to give Lee a sharp look, and Lee suddenly remembered that Zak had been down there. Kara must have told him who Zak had been.

“No, it’s fine,” Kara said under her breath, to avoid attracting the attention of those who didn’t know. “It’s good.”

Anders took a moment to catch himself. “We almost lost more than this,” he said, as the rest of the resistance started getting escorted off the deck, and he and Helo followed Kara and Lee as they walked back towards command.

“We were trying after Heavy Raiders, first, since we thought it’d be easier,” Helo said.

“Yeah, but the toasters had them too guarded,” Anders continued. “We didn’t figure it out before we’d lost... They were packing up to get off the planet, though, all their numbers concentrated. So we decided they weren’t watching all the grounded ships.”

“The Cylons were leaving?” Lee asked, looking at him.

Anders nodded. “They were all on one side of the planet by the time we left. No one followed. Maybe no one even saw. Which was good, since the FTL didn’t work like we expected.”

“The ship’s basically scrap,” Helo explained to Kara.

Lee only knew one way to take that news, though. “They must be going after the Fleet in earnest, now, all of them.” He frowned.

“And the Fleet means you now,” Kara said darkly, glancing at both men. “Not much of an escape, sorry.”

“Well, I don’t know about their plans,” Anders hesitated, and raised an eyebrow. “But really, as long as I don’t have to be in charge anymore, it’s a rescue.”

Helo grunted his agreement at that, and a moment of silence fell over them all.

“We should debrief, if you’re ready,” Lee said. This single success wasn’t the only thing they needed, all of them. “Kara?”

“You got it, sir,” she said, meeting his eyes before she started leading Helo off.

The look of gratitude and relief was all he needed for himself.


	4. Chapter 4

Boomer counted everything a victory, even when the representative of Threes had to add another chair to the twelve already filled, now that another Four had joined the individualized ‘rebels’. Cavil still hadn’t made a move, and that was another win.

Now that they were all seated, though, there was something out of place. Shelley had taken a seat as well, but she should have had to find another one.

“Where’s Caprica?” Boomer asked.

The rebels sat upright, as if only just realizing how they’d forgotten their first Six representative. Boomer looked to the others, though, and saw Cavil looking undisturbed.

“She was on the planet last, right?” Zak asked. “But she should have been back for the meeting.”

“She was insane.” Cavil gave them all a flat look. “She killed a Three down on the planet and withdrew all our forces. You can imagine our shock, but boxing her copy was the only safe option.”

Boomer sat stunned. The other Sixes stared at each other for a second, but had no words either. All around the table, a grave silence had fallen.

“Box her?” Zak finally blurted out. “You can’t do that.”

“Murder is a sin against God.” Cavil’s repetition of their rhetoric came with a raised eyebrow.

“It’s not the same,” protested Shelley with a frown. “No one would have died.”

“And what about a vote?” Zak said.

But Cavil didn’t even look flustered. “It was a matter of safety, how more clear do I have to be? There was no time, there was no other choice.”

Boomer had to swallow to keep from reckless words, but the rest of the meeting fell on flat ears. Boomer didn’t know what boxing looked like, but somehow all she could see was Cavil standing in front of her with Cally’s enraged eyes, ending her life. Caprica was gone. And if there had ever been a doubt in her mind that the Cylons were humanity’s children, it would have been lost with this.

They couldn’t keep pretending anymore. Denial was not an option, now that they’d lost one of their own.

After the meeting ended, the other Cylons left on their own, separate, but the rebels left in a vague group. Boomer knew the feeling, needing to be near someone who could understand just what this _meant_. The Fours and the Twos looked confused, but Boomer died a little when she saw Shelley clinging tightly to Natalie’s hand, white-knuckled.

“I’m going to unbox her,” Zak said, looking straight at Boomer with a sharply set jaw. “That look in Cavil’s eye...”

Boomer blinked. She hadn’t considered anything other than that Caprica had been lost. “You think he lied to us?”

“I’m not taking any chances,” Zak spat. “Ever since we made our position clear, he... I don’t care if we’re supposed to live by his decision, and maybe that’s the human in me that I still remember, but I don’t care. I have to know for myself. I have to make up my own mind.”

Boomer’s breath came in shaky, but she nodded.

“ _That’s_ justice,” Zak said under his breath.

Thinking of all they were trying to accomplish, Boomer couldn’t disagree with him. Maybe they were still handicapped by mistaken ideas of what Cylon meant.

***

The post-rescue briefing was something that Kara had never imagined hearing. Helo and Anders went loose quickly, making almost-flippant remarks to each other and to Lee that had Kendra frowning silently. Lee glanced to Kara, though, and she knew he could figure out half of it. They were glad to be alive. They could hardly believe it themselves. Something of that tension needed to come out.

The information was good too, and there was no lack of it. When Anders got caught in gestures, Helo cleared the table to use props describe exactly what the Cylon plans had been on the planet. Lee frowned as he watched, but Kara could see the reasoning behind it.

“What’s weird, though, is that it didn’t stay consistent,” Anders said, leaning back against the couch with a furrowed brow.

Helo made a humming noise. “It got more erratic, yeah, the longer things went.”

“Are they trying to learn from us, maybe?” Lee asked.

Anders and Helo glanced at each other. “They’re toasters, who knows what they can learn,” Anders said.

Lee tapped his finger on the table. “Major Shaw, I need you to go relay this to Galactica, and let them know the situation.”

Kendra stood with a tight salute, and Kara wondered if she missed the quick look Lee tossed to Kara. But she left, the hatch closed behind her, and Lee sat back with a sigh.

“So nobody knows, I’m guessing,” Helo opened quietly. “Judging from what happened on the deck.” The resistance leaders had relayed all the Cylon identities they’d known, but they hadn’t needed hints to avoid mentioning Zak.

Lee nodded.

“We never saw another copy of him.” Anders voice was low, not quite without emotion. “So I don’t think anyone else will talk.”

Kara didn’t know what to do with the silence that followed, and the way something felt unfinished.

“About the strategy,” Anders said, leaning over his knees and staring at the table. “Honestly, I don’t know what to think anymore.” Lee looked straight to him, and Anders glanced back as he continued, taking a deep breath. “When I found out about your brother...well, Kara probably told you, but it didn’t exactly brighten my day.”

Kara’s right hand clenched for a second, but it unclenched when she met Anders’ eyes and saw something new there.

“But what he said before we killed him, about not meaning to do it—it hit me again later.”

Helo sat up and nodded.

“I didn’t tell you everything when she was around,” Anders said, meaning Kendra. “One of our bombing runs didn’t go well a little while back, and I got trapped under rubble with...well, they’re the models they call Three and Six.” Anders’ eyebrows rose and fell. “They were arguing.” 

Kara’s heart didn’t skip a beat, but her gut was telling her that this was important. She just had no idea how or why.

“The Six said they couldn’t just destroy humanity now,” Anders kept relating, slowly as if it was a hard memory. “That it had been a sin, and they were trying to fix it. She—killed the other one, the Three. Then gave me a gun and told me to run free.” He sat back with a long sigh.

Kara swallowed. “They were playing you?”

Helo gave her a cautious look. “Then so was Zak, since he acted like he was on our side. And that seemed like too long a separation between times to keep up a ploy.”

Kara’s eyes went to Lee’s, and she felt a moment of surprise to see conflict there.

“Boomer said she never meant to shoot my father,” Lee murmured.

But that was taking it just a little too far, and in the shock Kara blurted out her instinctual thought . “And I prayed for Leoben’s soul, but what does that mean?”

“That it’s too damned complicated.” Anders sat still, not looking at anything. When no one had any answer, he leaned forward again. “And not my responsibility anymore. Thank you, Kara—and you too, Commander.” He nodded to both Kara and Lee.

“Call me Lee,” Lee said, offering out his hand for Anders to shake as he stood, Helo following.

“It’s good to be back home, in a sense,” Helo said to Kara as he passed by, and she nudged his arm with her hand. They could always talk later.

The hatch closed behind the two men, and Kara breathed out and looked down at her hands. Too damn complicated indeed.

“You prayed for Leoben’s soul?” Lee’s question came quick and curious.

Kara looked at him. “Yeah, well, Anders was right.”

“How is it complicated, when it comes down to it?” Lee asked, though it seemed like he was asking the universe more than her. “They destroyed our worlds!”

“We’ve destroyed our own, Lee.”

His eyes shaded for a second, and she could almost see the reflection of the Olympic Carrier in them.

The problem with what they knew of the Cylons now was, humans didn’t all make the same decisions either. It was why there was a justice system. But this...this didn’t make any sense yet.

***

“This is wrong,” Leoben protested again.

But this time, Boomer was sick of the explanations. “Shut up. We aren’t the unified race that was planned, but that’s a good thing.”

It almost looked like Zak was fiddling with the resurrection tub, but then with a jolt, the goo started to glow and there was a hum of life to it. He glanced up with tight eyes, and with a gulp, Boomer handed over Caprica’s resurrection chip that they’d managed to steal.

For all his protests, Leoben stayed as the body sprang to life when Caprica was plugged back in. “You’ll be fine, it’s only us,” Zak said quietly, and Leoben reluctantly came to the other side as Caprica shuddered in the slippery goo.

“He killed me,” she breathed out.

Boomer glanced at Zak—somehow she’d been afraid that he was right.

“Cavil killed me,” Caprica said. “Because I did it to a Three, but he meant it permanently with me. All we were doing was helping the humans escape the planet, but he couldn’t take it.”

Leoben helped her to a bathrobe as she climbed out of the tub, nerves twitching with her worry and frustration.

“What did you do?” Boomer asked.

“I was trying to convince the Three, since she was in charge of the planet’s baseship,” Caprica said, wiping the goo off her face with quick movements. “But before anything could happen, the humans blew up our building. We were crushed in the rubble with their leader, Anders, like Zak mentioned. She was trying to kill him, said that she’d do anything to prevent our plan from working. I had to kill her. But she must have told Cavil.”

At the word Anders, Zak hadn’t held back a quick look to Boomer. She could feel her eyes wide, wondering how that might work if the other Cylon ever remembered his identity.

“What is it?” Caprica asked suspiciously.

“Anders is one of the Final Four,” Leoben said quietly.

Caprica just stared at them and swallowed.

“And Cavil also said today that there was a lead on the planet,” Leoben continued.

“You think he was tracking them?” Caprica asked, worried. “The resistance? If—if he knew about the Final Four, it seems like something he would do.”

Boomer knew exactly what she meant.

“There’s a meeting in an hour that Cavil doesn’t know about,” Zak said quickly. “We need to talk there, if Cavil really does have a way to find the Fleet.”

It was the longest hour that Boomer had ever known, helping Caprica and talking themselves in circles about the problem. Finally they weren’t the only ones, and all the familiar faces were around the room.

“This needs to stop,” said a dark-haired Six named Kaelyn once Caprica had told her story again. “If he’s killing us, then he’s no different from the humans, so why do we need to follow him?”

“He has the Fours, the Fives, and the Ones, and most of the Threes,” Boomer pointed out with a sigh. “That’s enough to destroy the Fleet, even if we don’t help.”

“Then we need to make it to the Fleet before he does,” Zak said.

“How?” asked Natalie, frowning. “The Ones control everything right now.”

It only took Caprica a moment to answer, slowly and smoothly. “Maybe we need to realize that some of our brethren are the enemy to peace.”

Boomer looked at her, and with a twinge she realized that now _they_ were the resistance against the Cylons.

“Kill the others?” Shelley asked, aghast.

“It’ll only last until they resurrect,” Leoben said, as most of the group sat up a little straighter.

“If we do it all at once, there may be enough time,” Natalie said with a quick nod.

“This is madness,” Shelley said.

Some of them looked to her, others just looked out straight, but Boomer didn’t see one look that wasn’t hard.

“It’s our death or theirs,” Zak finally voiced something. “If what the Hybrid said is true, nothing matters for us if the humans die. That’s all we need to know.”

Boomer felt her spine straighten, and her hands clasped tightly around nothing. It was a decision. After all the time and worry and talk, it actually meant something. She just wished it felt a little more comfortable.

***

There had been a brief service after Roslin died, but it had been more religious than anything, the loss of a dying leader that didn’t yet spell the end to hope. But Kara wasn’t surprised when neither of the Adamas showed. Neither was she surprised that now, finally, a funeral was being held. It was more personal, and Kara had dealt with that grief already. She held the Pegasus bridge with Kendra while Lee attended, and she hadn’t seen him since it was over.

He was back on the ship, though, and now she was on her way to his quarters, frustration with this malcontent crew burning through her veins. His “Come in” when she knocked was nondescript, and she came in with a recommendation on the tip of her tongue—only to have Narcho and his insubordination knocked out of her head by the sight of Lee halfway through a bottle.

“Yes, Kara?” he asked without looking up.

“Lee?” she asked back.

A moment of silence hung before he said anything. “There was never a funeral for my mother. I watched my father grieve today for someone else, and I realized we never...”

Kara’s heart twisted, but not for him, not with the ugly things lying in her past that his words managed to touch. Forgetting that alcohol might not be the best thing for them to indulge in together, she reached down and whipped the bottle and an empty glass from the table, drinking down two shots’ worth of the sharp liquid before she’d walked two steps away.

“What, Kara?” Lee demanded from behind her. “Did that offend you somehow?”

Her tongue rolled over in her mouth as she turned briefly, words coming out before she could know why. “The fact that you forgot about your mother means something, Lee. It means guilt is unnecessary.”

“And that means?” Lee pushed, standing up, face taut with a war of emotions.

Every nerve in Kara’s body wanted to push back, but she knew him too well now. “It’s not a good time,” she muttered, and started walking for the door.

He crossed the room in a few steps, cutting her short, placing his hand against the wall to block her way with his arm. “Kara, you’re not being yourself,” he managed to say without slurring.

The memories were threatening to come back into her consciousness, and all Kara could do was stare at his jaw and not move. Gods, they could break each other over this.

“You’ve never mentioned your mother,” Lee realized out loud.

Kara’s reflexive breath almost hurt with its sharpness, and she had a fierce need to push past him. But he grabbed her shoulder.

“Kara, Kara please.”

“Please what?” she snapped at him, meeting his eyes finally. “I had a shitty childhood, okay, and I _chose_ not to attend my mother’s funeral and I don’t regret it.” There wasn’t much of a reaction in his eyes, so Kara didn’t know why she kept talking, throat hurting with the pressure of emotion. “I don’t regret it, I don’t, okay? And so I don’t understand what you’re feeling.”

She couldn’t breathe when Lee leaned in and kissed her slowly, but she breathed out tremblingly at his slight desperation. Not the same emotion she felt, but too much.

“Lee, I can’t do a comfort frak right now,” she whispered, eyes already threatening to sting as she shook her head.

He met her eyes, grief and understanding mingling there. “I don’t think I could handle one,” he admitted.

A half-hearted laugh escaped Kara before she could hold it in. She pursed her lips, trying to hold back the rest of the emotion running rough-shod through her, battling against years of repression. “Today was not a good day,” she said shortly.

“No...” Lee breathed in deeply, eyes glancing back at the large couch. “Can we sit?”

Simple words, but they hit home. “Yeah,” Kara said. Her steps weren’t even very reluctant as they walked away from the door.

“What were you going to report?” Lee asked as he took a seat with an exhale of exhaustion.

“Narcho’s causing trouble and I wanted you to transfer his dumb ass to Galactica,” Kara said, not needing to pause.

Lee snorted. “Didn’t lose your focus I see.”

“After how he got on my nerves?” Kara didn’t need to look at Lee as she leaned back into the couch, mouth firm. “No frakking way.”

“Do I get on your nerves like that?”

It caught Kara off guard and she just turned to stare at him. The curiosity in his eyes was almost naive, and the ridiculousness of it must have translated to her look. Just before it fully dawned on him, she broke down and giggle-snorted.

“Dumb question?” Lee asked, choking back a laugh and resting back against the couch.

“Mm,” Kara confirmed. She breathed out, rested her head for a moment on his shoulder. “You think too much.”

His arm draped over her shoulder and they just sat, breathing. Whatever emotion was left in Kara, and she didn’t bother to categorize it, made her find his hand with hers and give a small tight squeeze. The way his breath caught for a second, only to join hers in sharing the bit of silence again—it made her think that maybe he finally understood that what they had meant something even if it never changed.

***

“Our father” Caprica prayed, kneeling in the circle of rebel Cylons, no beginning and no end.

Zak sat among them, but for all his effort he couldn’t find anything in himself but emptiness.

“Guide our path,” Leoben continued with the benediction.

Zak squeezed his eyes shut, gulping down air, trying to cling once more to the Hybrid’s words. Kara and Lee entwined, and faith and justice for them all. Sometimes he was certain she’d said it in words just that clear.

“Keep us safe,” Boomer prayed reluctantly.

Fire and air, that was the metaphor she’d used. Kara, the fire of faith, and Lee, the wind of justice. Fire and air could each bring destruction upon the other if they faced each other, yet working together they could overcome all opposition. Zak had to think it meant that faith and justice might overcome every obstacle for him and his people on their journey to...home...whatever that meant. Peace, he hoped. The Hybrid’s words had never sounded like war.

“And let us see the journey’s end when it comes,” said Natalie, finishing the prayer with determination as well as hope.

Then Zak remembered that hope was just another manifestation of faith, and even in his cautious and still-cracked heart the Hybrid’s words could give him wings to fly. He had faith that Kara and Lee could help save the Cylon race.

“Amen,” he said quietly. He knelt with the Cylons who had dared to rebel, who had dared to think that there was something they needed from humanity, something that perhaps was already mirrored in themselves. It was the closest place he’d belonged.

He’d keep on hoping as they went forward with their task.

***

Kara stopped worrying about what Lee would say each time they frakked. Ever since his near-death, so much had been left to the language of his eyes, and Kara could read that at her own pace. She could frak him until they didn’t feel separate, rocking together, breathing together, fitting so close that they felt like a single person. And she went on hoping that he’d keep fearing words enough that some day she might be able to say them first.

They still kept things nominally secret among the Pegasus crew, keeping up the look of innocence and ignoring anything that might be a rumor. But when Kara snuggled against Lee’s chest in a post-orgasm daze, fingertips running absently over the contours of his body, she had to think that they weren’t really trying anymore. Maybe they weren’t afraid of the consequences. They’d dared luck just long enough for luck to win out for them.

Even if Kara still couldn’t put into words why Lee pulled her in like a gravity well, torquing her path to lie alongside his even as she pulled him closer to her—well, the ‘why’ didn’t matter as much as the ‘what then’. They seemed to have the latter down by instinct now.

Lee made pleasant snuffling noises just after sex, eyes half closed and body limp, not clingy but just _there_. Kara could get up right away and go back to work, tension pleasantly gone, but she had gotten into a habit of waiting to see if he’d fall asleep first. That he could do it, comfortably, securely, stirred her heart in the same manner that his smile did.

The phone rang, though, and stopped everything. Lee sat up to grab the receiver, nudging Kara from her use of him as a pillow, and he cleared his throat.

“CIC calling,” he said after a second.

Kara murmured non-distinctly, and watched him as he got dressed to leave. He sighed as he opened the door, and Kara breathed out and reached for her own clothes. Back to work it was.

But when she’d squashed her hair back into a less just-got-frakked appearance, and had waited an appropriate amount of time to follow without being immediately suspicious, it didn’t look routine in CIC. Frowns and tension threaded among everyone.

“What was it?” she asked, drawing close to Lee by the table.

When he stared at her, the shock in his eyes drove everything else out. “Communications are frakked right now because...we found a habitable planet,” he said in barely more than a whisper.

Kara just stared back at him with a suddenly dry mouth.

***

“We’ve lost the signal,” a Five said, glancing up from the datafont.

Cavil and Natalie both looked at him at the same time, but Zak took a second longer, having lost track of just what the Doral might mean. It had been taking so long for the homing-device the humans had unwittingly brought back with Anders to give them enough data that he’d forgotten it might actually succeed.

“They may have discovered it,” Cavil said, lips twisting in annoyance. “We’ll have to fill in the final jump coordinate with a guess, take the entire fleet.”

Zak suddenly realized that the rebels might have taken too long. “What are you going to do?” Natalie asked Cavil.

He looked at her like she was a mindless child. “Our fleet is all gathered. This is our chance to wipe out the humans if we jump in without raiders first. It’s a guess, yes, but if we succeed, then—” He ended it just short, not needing to say the rest.

Natalie’s eyes barely caught Zak’s before she responded sharply. “You can’t do this without a vote!”

Cavil had already nodded to the Doral to leave the room, and was moving towards the datafont. “This plan has taken almost a year too long already,” he said, almost snarling. “I’m not stopping now for a little _democracy_.”

But just as Zak’s hands clenched and he was about to do something desperate, a shot rang out and he jerked his spine straight. Cavil fell to the ground without a final word, a bright red hole in his forehead. Natalie stood, jaw tight, smoking gun in her hand.

“What?” The word came tumbling from Zak’s lips before his brain could catch up.

“That was the plan,” Natalie said, breathing out as she put the gun at her hip again. The room was charged with more than shock.

“I know,” Zak said, thinking of all the things he said he’d be willing to do. He had to shake his head loose as he walked with her up to the datafont. “But now what? The ship is crawling with—”

“Centurions,” Natalie said, with only a slight gulp of air to show that now that it was happening, the plan seemed too hasty. “However they’re programmed, it’s probably to help Cavil. We’ll need to release them if we are going to do this without disaster. Remind them of who ordered the programming in the first place, and they should be on our side.”

“Did you think of this already?” Zak demanded, staring at the Six leader over the red glow of the goo.

“Yes.”

“Are you sure—”

“It’s all we have left,” she snapped at him. Then, staring him in the eye. “We are so close to falling short now. You have to believe hard or get out of the way. Please.” Then, breathing in and adding almost as an afterthought, “And freeing the Centurions is the right thing to do in any case.”

Zak knew she was right. Cylon problems meant Cylon methods, and he wasn’t unprepared, just— He nodded.

“Get Caprica, tell her everything’s going down now,” Natalie breathed out. “We’re taking the Cylon fleet.”

Thinking mostly of the humans they were at this moment ready to save, Zak spread the word. There would be no permanent end, but if all went well, permanent change nonetheless. It wasn’t like there was ever a bad time for that.

***

“It’s just not an ideal world,” Lee said, a mere couple hours after the planet had been discovered and the fleet had jumped in. He could scarcely believe that he had to make the argument, that this was being looked at by some as more than a pit-stop.

“But, but the signal blocking,” Baltar protested, waving his hand. He wasn’t the only one who was grateful to the disrupting cloud about the world.

Yet Lee had to agree with his father when the Admiral spoke. “The Cylons have more than one way to find us, Mr. President.”

There was a shuffling around the table of the other members, of Sarah the Gemenon religious leader and of Kara and Kendra and Tigh, all there for the discussion of the issue.

“What if they do?” Baltar demanded before anyone could say anything else. “What if the Cylons do find us again? There are ships upon ships full of people out there...are they thinking of safety? No. They just want a place to rest.”

“That is what Earth is for,” broke in Sarah with a sharply wrinkled brow.

Kara was the one who frowned at that. “Earth’s not a magical place,” she said derisively.

“Exactly,” Baltar followed, ignoring Kara’s discomfort at the man counting her on his side. “If the Cylons could track us to this place, where DRADIS doesn’t work, then what place couldn’t they track us to? But if they can’t—if, if they need DRADIS—then this world is uniquely protected.”

“Wait.” Lee had to raise his hand, ask the question before they circled dangerously near to this rabbit hole. “Are you suggesting we _settle_ here? So the Cylons, when they come, can just nuke us again?”

Baltar stared at him, grasping for words.

It was Kara’s voice that came out of left field to stun him. “Lee, can you even imagine a situation where the Cylons don't come back?” The question was an argument more than a curiosity.

And when Lee looked at her, saw in her eyes that she wanted to believe, he knew that he didn’t even have that much. “No.”

A few minutes later, Adama sent the parties away to their ships to think it over again and reconvene at a later point. They had time, so it seemed.

***

“The Hybrids are screaming,” Shelley whispered, standing at Boomer’s side as the baseship shook. Her long fingers clenched tightly into fists, arms desperately straight at her sides.

Boomer was still having a hard time catching her breath as they finally did it, finally eliminated the ‘enemy’ from the plan as the Ones and Fours and Fives and Threes protested. But Shelley’s words were so pointed that she looked to her. “You listen to them?”

The softest of the Sixes nodded. “Leoben taught me.” Then, with a shaky breath, “They weren’t ready for this. I don’t know if we are either.”

“But you said yes to the plan,” Boomer said. The ship lurched with a dull boom, as if mimicking her emotions, and Boomer wished for a second that she could see out a window. She didn’t dare look through the datafont; it would be too overwhelming.

Shelley’s lips pursed. “I believe we need the humans alive at any cost...but this could go so very wrong.” Her last words came out soft, whispery.

“The Sixes have it,” Boomer said. She hesitantly reached out a hand to take Shelley’s. “They’ll make it work.”

***

Zak watched a non-rebel baseship explode, and despite everything his hand trembled in the datafont beneath the cool goo. He’d just killed some of his people. No worse than what he’d done on Caprica, and no more permanent, what with the proximity to the resurrection hub. But it felt so much worse.

Then no sound came through the communication. He stared at Natalie across the control center.

“ _We have control of all the ships remaining.”_ He could recognize Caprica even over the radio, and could feel for the slight waver in her voice.

Natalie’s breath seemed to catch before she could answer. “The resurrection hub will be crowded for a while, but not forever.” Her eyes shone with the magnitude of this first success.

“So we do...?” Zak asked.

“Exactly?” Natalie asked back, briefly unsure.

 _“We need to negotiate with the humans,”_ Caprica’s firm voice settled the question. _“They need to know that we don’t want them killed.”_

“Though another Cylon fleet does want that,” Natalie answered. Then, as if by just looking at Zak her protest grew legs, she continued. “And we won’t even get that far in our explanation before they would destroy us, too, and we’d resurrect surrounded by our none-too-happy brothers.” The last words fell flat and hard from her lips. “Or no, they’ll just jump away, disappear, and it’ll be the same result.”

Zak thought of the fleet, remembered how they’d found them in the first place. “Can we contact the Final Four somehow?”

“Not before they wake,” Leoben said as he walked in. “And as far as we know, only death brings awakening.”

Silence held over the radio.

Zak looked around at his people, both feet over the line, looking for the next one they had to cross. They needed to get to the fleet, and the way Natalie looked to him as if he might have an answer made him realize that she wasn’t all wrong. “Then there’s only one option,” he said, curling his fingers in on themselves.

Leoben met his eyes. “They’ll kill you again,” he said, recognizing Zak’s intention faster than the rest.

But Zak could pull the memory back and look at it from a safe distance, and he glanced around at them all. “Kara couldn’t kill me herself the last time. She’ll hesitate. Long enough for me to surrender. And Lee and my father—” Childhood memories, stolen and heartbreaking as they were, came flooding ready to use. “They won’t,” he said shortly.

He looked around the baseship that was supposed to be his home, and saw no one protesting. No one was any less desperate than he for this to work. It had been his idea to start with, and he had to have the courage to see it through. “I’ll go in first,” he said, taking a deep breath, “and you follow.”

“We have to finish this before the resurrection is complete,” Leoben said with a nod, a deep look into Zak’s eyes.

“Then let’s get you a Heavy Raider,” said Natalie, over the radio so they all could hear. “And those incomplete coordinates.”

Zak wasn’t sure he knew exactly what he was doing as he walked out of the room, but Leoben put a hand to his back and Natalie to his shoulder, and he hoped their faith and their logic wasn’t just a Cylon construct. There had to be some humanity driving all this.

***

Kara rubbed at her eyes, staring at the table in the middle of Pegasus’ CIC.

“We won’t settle,” Lee sighed. “The vote will never carry, if it even gets that far. And there will be riots, I know.”

“People want to get to Earth,” Kara said, momentarily playing the devil’s advocate. As if there was such a thing in a frakked up situation like this.

“And the people who went down and touched solid ground?” Lee raised an eyebrow as he asked the mostly-rhetorical question. “The ones whose reports have spread through the Fleet? Maybe that’ll have more weight than prophecy, even if ones have come true so far.”

Kara didn’t meet his eyes, her pen resting on the paper in front of her without moving, biting the inside of her lip. If he wanted her to agree with him, he’d picked the wrong vocabulary.

“What?” Lee asked after a few more seconds.

“Prophecies come with signs,” she said. “Signs like a random Raptor check leading us to the one planet that might keep us safe from the Cylons.”

“You don’t believe...”

Kara shook her head, raising her eyes to meet him. She couldn’t quite explain it. “Maybe we were meant to be here for something, though. Not settling, but—”

They were quiet enough to keep the conversation almost private, as the other people around the control center did their work still.

“Sir, there’s something on the fuzzy DRADIS,” Hoshi said after a second, looking back over his shoulder.

Lee stood bolt upright.

“It looks like—gods, it looks like the Cylons,” the communications officer gasped out.

“What?” Lee turned in shock. “Does the fleet have the emergency coordinates?” he asked, sharp on the tail of the news.

“No sir,” Hoshi said with a frown.

“Godsdamnit,” Kara swore, and hit the table, but it was barely audible above the rush of fear and the talking that came with it around the room. “There’s landing parties still on the planet anyway.”

“How did they find us?” Lee breathed out, as the officers took battle-stations without needing to be told.

“And I can’t block their transmission,” Hoshi said, almost frantic. “Something’s coming through.”

The radio crackled, and Kara looked up out of habit.

 _“Finally, I get—”_ The young male voice didn’t sound formal enough. _“I need to speak with Kara Thrace or...or Commander Adama.”_

Kara felt all the blood in her body drop to her toes, her fingers tightening around the edge of the table. Lee's own fingers shook as he reached for the button, needing to respond, but knowing just as well as she did that it was _Zak_. He might not be sure he believed it, but they could both be sure that the Admiral wouldn’t.

“This is Commander Adama,” he managed with admirable composure.

 _“Lee?”_ The voice ripped through Kara’s heart in a single tear, breaking through her attempts at healing and forgetfulness.

“What the hell is this?” Lee demanded back, as the bridge officers all looked confused.

Gods, it was Zak, it was Zak and the Cylons, and the day had finally come.

“Sir, the Vipers have located the Cylon ship,” Hoshi said. “Should they shoot?”

If they’d thought, it might have seemed incongruous, but Kara and Lee didn’t get that far. “No!” they snapped at once.

 _“Lee, the baseships should be here now, but if you’ll look you’ll see that all of the weapons ports are closed. No raiders. We’re not attacking.”_

“It’s true, sir, there’s almost a whole fleet,” Hoshi broke in.

 _“We...”_ Zak continued, sounding, horribly, exactly like he always had. _“We’ve broken from the rest of the Cylons, me and some of the other models. There’s only a few hours before the others come to destroy all of us as well as you, so we want to come aboard your ship, unarmed, to talk about surrender.”_

“Sur-surrender?” Kara’s eyes were fixed on Lee as he kept finding words, disoriented as they were. Her face felt too tight, but Lee at least could stammer enough to keep the conversation going.

 _“Yes,”_ Zak said simply. _“Please. Nothing is as it seems.”_

“Sir, if we’re going to shoot we need to do it now,” Hoshi broke in again. “Should we?”

For a long second Lee clenched his fist and stared at the table, and Kara didn’t have an answer for him. Then, not surprising Kara—“No,” he said.

Swallowing, Kara stepped a little closer.

“This is what Anders told us about,” Lee said under his breath as Hoshi, wide-eyes, conveyed the Commander’s message without question.

“We have to listen,” Kara finally managed to say, voice hoarse now that she used it. “Listen first before we do anything.” The faith deep in her was rising up, and she could feel it shining in her eyes as she looked at him—the irrational but overwhelming faith that had followed her from childhood and only now seemed to have a purpose.

He looked like he had enough skepticism for the both of them, but something more than faith was pushing him, and that would be all that mattered.

While the crew around him looked incredulous, Lee grabbed the receiver in an almost-firm grip and spoke out to the Cylons that were somehow meant to meet them here. “Take your ship into Pegasus’ bay, slowly, no tricks.” Then, off the radio, he ordered Hoshi to send the not-shooting orders across the ship.

 _“Lee, what happened to Dad?”_ Zak’s voice continued.

Kara had to swallow hard at how familiar the voice sounded.

“He’s Admiral now, and he doesn’t know you exist.” Kara couldn't protest Lee's harshness. “We’ll talk later.”

“Sir?” Kendra finally entered the CIC. “What are you doing?”

“Not destroying an opportunity.” He gave his XO a straight look, even as he held back so much. “We’ll shoot at the first sign of trouble.”

If Kara had ever been grateful for anything, it was that Cain’s ingrained fear in her crew was serving them well now. They’d need that frightened loyalty.

“Sir, there’s a lot of chatter in the Fleet, and Galactica is on the line.”

Lee looked to Kara first. She nodded slightly, knowing what they both had to do.

“Major Shaw, inform Galactica of the facts,” Lee said shortly. “A Cylon has surrendered itself into our custody and the CAG and I will start questioning immediately.”

Kendra saluted sharply and that was that.

Heart pounding, Kara walked with Lee out of the CIC, and he didn’t need to tell her because it was written all over his body in tension—this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.

***

Zak raised his hands as he stepped out of the Raptor onto the hangar deck of Pegasus. The armed marines didn’t astonish him, of course, but he exhaled as soon as he was not immediately shot. Lee wasn't there yet; they were waiting for his orders. Commander Lee.

This was it. The entire mission that he and Cylonity had adopted was resting on this meeting. Tension wrenched his gut as he saw the figures coming from far off. Finally more than just impressions, the Hybrid's exact words rang in his head: _the lack of a shot is more peace than the moment._

His eyes were wide open, nothing left to lose but this and everything clear because of that fact. He knew, then, what she’d meant. All he needed was to stay alive. Keep the shots lacking.

There was no shock on either Kara or Lee’s faces as they stepped up to where he stood, Lee in Commander's pins and Kara—an XO? CAG? She looked like she belonged here. Zak stood, hands still up. Please let her be right, he whispered in his mind.

No one moved. Nothing more than stares even happened. Zak could hear his pulse racing, could sense the adrenaline in his sharpened sight and other senses.

“So—explain why I won't regret not shooting you now,” Lee said after a minute’s pause.

The fresh rush of faith from the Hybrid’s words made Zak feel almost articulate again. “Because I know you, and I know you'll want peace more than revenge for something you don't understand. We're here to give up, Lee.” The plan whirled through his head, the plan to set aside everything that made the Cylons who they'd been before: to ask forgiveness, to go to Earth, to escape war forever. These two people who he'd loved, they were the proclaimed key to this destiny. All he needed was for them to listen once, and everything would follow.

Lee stood for a long while and said nothing. Kara didn't move, and he knew that if he met her eyes they would be just slightly off. The way she stood by Lee, Zak knew just how close they’d become, another confirmation if he needed one of the Hybrid’s accuracy. And he’d need them both to stand against the world—just them, though. He could tell he wouldn’t need more allies.

“So start explaining,” Lee said at last, mouth twisted. “Start explaining everything before my father gets here, because unless you can find a way to sound not crazy, that's when this'll all fall apart.”

Zak could almost have laughed at his genuineness. The tension around his heart loosened for a second as Lee, a human, was talking to him, a Cylon, and he could tell it wasn’t a trick. No shot fired. It had worked. Thank god, or the Hybrid, or wherever the prophecy had come from—this truce was just the beginning.

He took a deep breath and prepared to tell them everything, for this was the first step toward the new beginning.

 _The End_


End file.
